Demons, Inc
by aikitty
Summary: COMPLETE AU Inuyasha works at Demons, Inc., a demonic company that keeps the world human free. So what happens when Kagome Higurashi, an average mortal, manages to breech defenses and escape into the demon world? Based on Monsters, Inc.
1. Chapter 01: Slumber Parties

DEMONS, INC.

Comments: The rating for this fic comes from Inuyasha's atrociously offensive language, Miroku's unstoppable perversion, and incredibly stupid humor. It gets progressively weirder with each chapter. This is based on the Pixar movie _Monsters, Inc._ In my final note, I would like to warn you that everyone is profusely out of character. :) Enjoy!

Chapter 01: Slumber Parties Seldom Go as Planned

* * *

"Hey, Yuka!" Kagome said happily as her friends came through the front door that she was holding open for them. "Hi Eri, hi Ayumi!"

"Alright, Kagome! Down to business! Popcorn?" Yuka began. Ayumi and Eri disappeared behind Kagome and went into the house, where they made themselves comfortable in front of the television with no shame. Ayumi at least had the decency to strike up conversation with Kagome's mother, but Eri simply ran Kagome's younger brother out of the room and turned the channel to something more worthwhile for a teenage girl.

"Check..." Kagome answered warily. This was the checklist they went through every time a slumber party was to be had. This was the checklist from which Kagome purposely "forgot" one item, each time, simply to get Yuka worked up. It was entertaining, up until Yuka chased her out of her own house and made her run to the store for whatever it was she had forgotten.

"Movies?" This was the checklist that Yuka took _entirely_ too seriously.

"Check..."

"Pillows?"

"Check."

"Ice cream?"

"Check."

"Nail polish?"

"Knew I was forgetting something..." Kagome said with a grin as Yuka's fists clenched tightly and her face reddened like a tomato.

* * *

Inuyasha watched the tiny televised screen before him with a sort of lethargic glaze to his yellow eyes. He drummed his clawed fingers against the smooth metallic table atop which sat the screen. He started to drool down his other arm, which was being used to prop up his head. When he realized this messy transgression, he hastily jerked out of his doze and wiped his arm on his coworker's jacket, which had been left next to him, and sighed heavily.

_Nothing_ was going on today.

Instead of having a _real _job, like a hunter or an _pro athlete_, even, he just _had_ to make his family proud. He just _had_ to go through with an entire education and land himself at the famous Demons, Inc., where he sat in his rolling chair all day and watched monitors, and made sure that no human being ever crossed the line from their world into the demons' world. He did so much paperwork in the evenings that he could swear he would be blind by the time he was three hundred, and blindness did not often happen to a demon for natural causes, and it never happened that early in life.

Some days it was not so bad, like the days when humans _did _manage to cross over, because he had a great deal of fun traumatizing them before sending them home. And if they refused to go home, he ripped them into pieces, though that did not happen too often---no where near as often as he would have liked. Come to think of it, had it ever happened? He couldn't remember. All he remembered that he'd performed his job as well as he could. Humans were not allowed in the demons' world, and it was Inuyasha's job to keep them from getting there, no matter how boring.

Humans were not allowed because humans were _bad_. Their touch was toxic and their breath could wilt plants (never mind that a good deal of demons could do that, too). Some even had eight heads and twenty-six arms, and everyone knew _that_ could be very dangerous---a human would be able to see every direction at once and wield twenty-six weapons, not including the ones they held with their feet. Inuyasha had worked at Demons, Inc. for three years and had yet to see a human with more than one head, or even one that came with a weapon as simple as a sharpened stick. He also had yet to be harmed by their toxic skin and odorous breath (although, he had not yet touched or been breathed on by a human personally). Maybe once one of _those_ humans showed up, life would get a little more interesting.

But as it was, he spent eight hours a day staring at a screen and cheating on himself in Solitaire and spinning in his rolling chair while nothing even remotely interesting happened. It used to happen very often, before he came to work at Demons, Inc, but for the past one hundred years humans were getting rarer. Maybe once every few months, an old man toddled into the demon world by mistake thinking he had stumbled upon Florida via his bedroom closet (clearly all the scary demons were actually Disney characters from the theme park). Maybe once a year an airplane would crash in what the humans called the Bermuda Triangle and send the entire group over to the demon world. That was a little more interesting, because humans who traveled in packs had more confidence, meaning that a few of the younger individuals---usually male---would fight back. That was always the best.

But that had last happened three months ago, so it would be a long time before it happened again statistically speaking.

Inuyasha sighed melodramatically. Life sucked.

* * *

"Kagome..." Yuka said dangerously. Her angry expression boiled into something like utter heartbreak. "How could you? How could you forget the nail polish?! I even gave you a note during class yesterday. Didn't you get it?"

"I got your memo, boss," Kagome joked. "I'll go get some now...what color do you want?"

"Here," Yuka said, brandishing a new list at her like a weapon. "I expected something like this. I have the colors and brands on here that are needed. Now, go! And bring us back some burgers, will you? No pickles!"

"Yeah, yeah," Kagome said. She waved her friend off and sought around the house for her other sneaker. She had seen it only this morning...

Thirty minutes later, Kagome had managed to find her _brother's _sneaker, which would just have to do, she decided. So with two different shoes covering her already mismatched socks, and feeling a little agitated, she grabbed her wallet, stuffed it into her jeans pocket along with Yuka's note, and headed out the door.

Halfway down the walkway, she saw a wondrous and horrible sight approaching her, and her treacherous heart sped up dangerously. She let out a mangled, horrified yelp and ran back through the yard, yelling out for her friends as if her very life was on the line---which it might be. You never could tell these days.

Yuka, Eri, and Ayumi all came running out of the house, tripping over each other and making a good deal of noise, which Kagome tried to silence. She tugged her friends along to the walkway in a fluster of clumsy movement, where she pointed to the materializing figure on the horizon.

"Houjou...!" they all breathed at once, as if speaking at a normal volume would scare off the coming visitor.

* * *

"You know, Inuyasha..." Miroku said as he came into work---late, again---and pulled out a naughty magazine as if from nowhere. "One of these days..."

"One of these days...?" Inuyasha prompted, clearly bored and desperate for something to occupy him, even as Miroku got lost in Catty Cupcake's eyes---or rather, something a little lower---and left his sentence hanging.

"I'm not sure. I just felt it had the need to be said."

"Idiot." Inuyasha leaned back in his chair, craning his neck backward. He swished his hair around until he got dizzy, and then he watched the ceiling shift above him. When it wore off again he repeated the process.

"Kagura was sneaking around late last night again. I think she's up to something," Miroku warned suddenly, snapping his magazine closed with a flourish. He looked very professional. His serious look was made utterly laughable when one realized what he was holding, but Inuyasha straightened up, his legs thrown out in front of himself carelessly.

"That bitch has been sneaking around late at night for the past three years. If she's up to something, she's awfully slow about it," Inuyasha said dryly. Miroku gave him a pointed look.

"I mean, even later than normal." Miroku had lowered his voice conspiratorially.

"And how do you know this? Were you sneaking around, too?" Inuyasha asked him.

"No. As is my duty, I was reviewing security tapes this morning. I'm so dedicated I was reviewing them from home."

"What were the tapes of? The women's bathroom?"

"Ah, well..."

"That's real sick, Miroku." Inuyasha's face perfectly reflected the disgust he felt in his best friend.

* * *

"Oh-my-gosh, what are we going to do?!" Eri demanded hoarsely of Yuka, who was their unofficial leader. Probably because she was the bossiest and meanest---not that anyone would ever tell _her _that.

"He has a crush on Kagome, right?" Ayumi asked. Yuka and Eri both nodded vigorously, as if this sliver of information was very important and should be viewed only in a critical light. And maybe it was. It's best not to leave those start of issues to chance.

"I've got an idea!" Yuka proclaimed brightly. They had been crouched down around the archway at the top of the staircase at the Higurashis' property, but with her words Yuka stood up suddenly and pulled Kagome back along the yard and stuffed her into the well-house, which was enshrined on Kagome's property. She grumbled to herself while trying to let her eyes adjust to the dimness.

"Stay in there," Yuka murmured to her through the shut door, "we'll get some juicy gossip out of him!"

"Oh, hello, Houjou!" Eri said brightly as the teenage boy came up to where the girls were pretending to loiter innocently. Those girls never did anything _innocently_. Innocence was not something they were known for. Houjou should have known better.

"Hello, girls. Is Higurashi here?" But, sadly, he did not know better. Some might even be so bold to claim him a simple fool. Others would call him courageous.

"Oh, you just missed her," Yuka lied breezily. "She just went out to run an errand. Stay for a few minutes and she'll be back."

"Are you going to ask her out, Houjou?" Eri asked, heedless of consequences. In the well-house, Kagome smacked her hand to her forehead at her friend's lack of tact. Tact was not something the girls were known for, either.

"You're so sweet, Houjou, coming all the way here to see Kagome!" Ayumi said with a tragic sigh. She was lost in dreamland of hearts, roses, and chocolates as Yuka and Eri bombarded the unfortunate boy with questions.

Kagome allowed her friends to badger their poor classmate as she turned around to look down at the well. She thought she had heard a small sound come from it, but it seemed impossible; the well had been untouched for decades. Truly, she wasn't even permitted to be inside of the mini-shrine. Not like that stopped her from doing anything before.

"Buyo?" Kagome whispered as the sound came again, supposing her lazy cat might have wandered in to escape Souta. She went down to investigate.

* * *

"Guys, we're having a problem down on the first floor. I can't get it myself," a pretty red-headed demon said a little forlornly. "Care to help?"

"What is it that ails you, lovely lady?" Miroku asked. Like all other women with sense, Ayame brushed the comment away as if it was no more than a irritating pollen on the breeze. Miroku's charms worked on ladies almost as often as humans came into the demon world.

"Someone stuck a sandwich in the air vent. I can't even reach it standing on Kouga's shoulders. Miroku, could you possibly...?"

"Anything for a lovely lady!" Miroku declared passionately. He followed Ayame out the door.

Inuyasha bit his lip to keep from laughing outright and followed the group down to the elevator. When the show was over, he'd claim the sandwich.

Miroku was pulling a glove away from his hand, positioned underneath the air vent. He was prepared to loosen the plate on the vent, just enough to drop the sandwich, using his demon technique _Kazaana_. He was thwarted, tragically, when the emergency lights and shrill sirens went off.

"Figures that we'd have some human come through _now_, when we aren't doing our jobs," Inuyasha growled, flattening his ears against his head like an angry cat.

"Go handle him, will you, Inuyasha?" Miroku asked, clasping his hands over his pointed ears to protect them from the shrieking sirens.

"Yeah, yeah. Save that sandwich for me, you hear!" he called as he took off to the television room. Nothing was on any of the television screens and none of the hot spots on the computer charts were glowing with use. No human had come through. With a growl, Inuyasha switched the alarm off manually and trotted back down the stairs to where Miroku was dusting himself off and Ayame was walking away.

"So?" Miroku asked as Inuyasha swooped down and picked up the sandwich.

"False alarm," Inuyasha said and flicked the hairs off of the mayonnaise, sniffing the food once before packing it into his mouth in one bite, somehow managing to lick the mayonnaise from his fingers at the same time. Demons are very good with etiquette.

"Oh. Well. What a bummer," Miroku said as he and Inuyasha went off to the television room again. "I'll go get lunch. _Sango's_ sound good?"

"I would've preferred some pancakes from IHOG, but you seem to really have a thing for _Sango's_. Or maybe just Sango. So, yeah. Bring me a burger, will you? No pickles."

* * *

Kagome was very, very frightened. Not quite as frightened as she had been when she nearly got caught sneaking looks at Christmas presents last year, but it was a close call.

She had been in the well-house at home, pattering down the steps to investigate a sound that was probably from her cat. Never mind how her cat got in there, because cats are sneaky and sly and crafty, and everyone knows they can do anything when they want to if they really want to do it. However, when she had got down to the well and peaked in, there was no cat. She had heard something strange after that, like a breath of strong wind whistling through a narrow tunnel, and then she was pushed into the well. She had cried out, fully expecting a broken neck when she landed, but nothing like that had happened.

She opened her eyes and was not in her well-house anymore, nor even the well. She was sprawled out on the floor of a very pristine, tiled hallway, with cool florescent lights humming down at her, and she was instantly filled with the lonesome feeling she always felt in office buildings.

Before she could really examine her situation critically, however, a strange, cloaked man started approaching her, gliding like a ghost. She felt as if she was in the makings of a very bad horror film. So, like any good horror film heroine, she screamed piercingly and took off at a dead run for the fun of it. The figure looked a little stunned for a moment, probably at the magnitude of her shrill cry, but he was quick to pursue her.

She had gone through the hallways screaming for help, help, help, with her heart thumping wildly in her chest like a bird's beating wings against a cage. She threw herself down rows of stairs---never into rooms and elevators, because she did not want to be trapped (it was still early on in the horror movie, when the heroine has a teeny tiny bit of sense)---and panted, and whined, and yelled, and made a good deal of noise that should have brought people out to see what was wrong with her, until she finally came to a crowd gathered in a place that might have been a lobby.

Kagome tried to ignore the way the people in the crowd all looked very strange, with things like wings and horns and animal ears and elf ears and tails and a million eyes and legs, and she pushed her way through. When she looked back, the cloaked figure was gone.

She then stopped running, doubled over, and panted like her life depended on it. Everyone was in an absolute hush around her. And then everyone began backing up. And then _they_ began to scream in pure and unadulterated terror, as if she was the one with fifteen-inch long claws, sabretooth tiger fangs, thorn-covered skin, and sharp beaks. Oh, yes, everyone run from the defenseless teenage girl with two mismatching sneakers who had a sharp stitch in her side that caused her to limp.

So she did what any sensible person in her position would do. She joined in the fun. She screamed and ran in crazy circles, limping wildly with the cramp in her side and her voice going deep-high-deep-high-deep-high with every burst of pain, until she came to a room with a door that was slightly ajar. She tumbled into it and closed the door behind her. The room was dim and quiet, and she did not even pause to inspect it as she slid down, panting wildly, against a very cool, refreshing filing cabinet. Kagome never guessed she would have associated _filing cabinet _with the word _refreshing_.

"Who the fuck are you?" asked a caustic voice from the other side of the room. Kagome's head flew up to look the speaker in the eyes. He looked rather angry with her. The name stitched on his polo said Inuyasha.

"Ka-Kagome..." she said nervously.

"Well, Ka-Kagome, what the hell do you think you're doing in here?"

"It's just Kagome, and I don't know! How should I know?! What's wrong with all you people?!"

"What do you mean, what's wrong with us people?! Something not to your liking here?! Sorry we didn't roll out the red carpet and bring the fine wine, princess! Scram, go home!"

"Well, so-rry!" Kagome huffed. "It isn't _my_ fault I was transported from home to here for no reason, and it's definitely not my fault that a creepy psycho in a cloak chased me down the halls, and it's _most _definitely not my fault that everyone here with wings and---and _the like_ is afraid of me!"

There was a stunned silence, wherein Inuyasha stared at her and she panted.

"You're a human, aren't you, Ka-Kagome?" he said. The man seemed a little afraid now---although he was not afraid of Kagome for the moment; he was afraid of what would happen to his job if his boss found out she was here.

"Well, of course I am! What else would I be? A unicorn?"

"Oh, fuck," he said. "How the hell did you get here?!"

"I don't know! One minute I was at home, the next minute I was here! And where is 'here,' exactly?!"

"You're in the _demon_ world, brat," he said with a glower. "Sit right there, if you value your life and want any chance of getting home," he ordered. He turned back to his television and scooted his rolling chair over to a control panel with great flourish, where he pushed several buttons. A security video played and a computer screen lit up. Kagome stood and watched over his shoulder as he clicked through a menu and a list came up, titled _Hot Spots_. Next to each location name, there was a set of coordinates, and then next to that was a bar showing 'warmth.' The bars' outlines started at green and faded into pink at the other end, like tropical-flavored bubble gum.

"What're those bars for?" Kagome asked.

"They show when someone last used a hot spot to come through," Inuyasha responded mechanically, not really hearing the girl while he scrolled through and looked at the date and meter of each hot spot, alternatingly watching the security video that was still playing on the television. "When someone comes through, it flushes pink. Over time, it 'cools' and fades back into green."

"Comes through?"

"Humans accidentally come in to the demon world using hot spots. Like, oh, you guys call it the Bermuda Triangle."

"So that's where people disappear to!"

"We send 'em back. Or kill 'em," Inuyasha explained matter-of-factly. Kagome's heart thumped a little faster. She did not want to be killed.

"So is my house a hot spot?"

"If it is, it isn't listed," Inuyasha said, twitching his nose. "Damn it, this can wait. Go sit in the corner. Lunch is here!"

* * *

"Holy---holy---holy something! There's a human in here! There's a _human_ in here! Where I work, eat, sleep, and look at naughty magazines!"

Miroku had come in just moments after Inuyasha had attempted to order Kagome to sit in a corner. Upon seeing the human girl, Miroku dropped all the food he had been carrying and spilled the drinks on the floor. Inuyasha vaguely noticed a red handprint on his cheek. Ah, Sango and her burning touches---she could slap with such a flame to leave a burn mark for weeks. And if you really made her mad, she could send you up in a puff of fire, and you'd flame like a bonfire for days.

"I'm not that scary, am I? I brushed my teeth this morning, so not even my breath is potent," Kagome said, breathing into her hand and testing her breath. It still smelled like toothpaste.

"Ahh! She's one with toxic breath, then!" Miroku warned.

"Sheesh. I never realized mint was so offending to demons," Kagome said. "I don't have toxic breath. I don't know anyone who has it, either. Well, my teacher in history class kind of---"

"Miroku. You spilled _soda_ on my _cheese burger_."

"How can you be worried about food when there is a human in here?! How did she get in here?"

"I'm trying to figure that out now," Inuyasha snapped. "None of the hot spots are active and I've reviewed the tapes. She doesn't come in at any of the borders where she can be pushed back. She just popped into the hallway like nobody's business," Inuyasha explained, picking up his cheese burger and unwrapping the foil as he rewound the tape and showed Miroku.

"Oh, that's the crazy guy that chased me. And that's when I tricked him, made him think I was going straight when I really fell down the stairs. Pretty cool, eh?" Kagome asked as they watched the footage. "I'm not really that fat, am I? Oh, man, look at the crowd scatter! I have some real potential here."

"So, what will we do about this?" Miroku asked, suddenly calmer. He felt rather foolish. He normally kept a cool head, especially at work, but humans were very dangerous things. Even moreso than global warming and rising gas prices.

"I'm not sure. I guess we can always take her to another border and put her back in her world. The humans will think of something to do with her."

"No!" Kagome cried. "If you put me somewhere like---like, next to the Bermuda Triangle, I'll die! Besides, how am I supposed to get back home on my own?" She did not wish to be shoved into the middle of an ocean, miles from home.

"Your people will help you," Miroku assured.

"No they won't! They'd put me in an insane asylum for talking crazy talk, after I go to prison because I don't have a passport! I'll never see home again!"

"...That's pretty complex," Miroku noted with some amazement.

"You can't make me go!"

"Wanna bet?" Inuyasha growled. He cracked his knuckles at her.

"I'll---I'll scream if you touch me! I've had years of voice training, I can scream loud and high and clear and shatter windows and mirrors and ear drums and flower vases and wine glasses!" Kagome warned. Miroku took a step back. He had heard the legends of humans with wails enough to rival a banshee...

"Wanna be killed?" Inuyasha said, showing off his fangs. Kagome frowned, and then reached forward and poked one of the canines.

"I'm not scared of little _puppy_ teeth," she said defiantly.

"Oh, you bitch!" he snarled, licking his tooth fervently. "Do you have any idea of the abilities demons like myself possess?"

"I don't know, but there mustn't be a lot of them if you're all afraid of me."

Inuyasha and Miroku glared at her in perfect unison. Kagome grinned winningly, not at all daunted. If she could take on Geometry in middle school and make a perfect A+, she could make it out of this without breaking a sweat.

"Wait," Miroku said suddenly. "This can't be good at all."

"What? We'll just shove her on one of the borders, or we'll kill her."

"We're going to be _fired_."

"Oh, _wah_," Kagome said. "That's not as important as me getting killed."

"Why are we going to be fired?" Inuyasha asked, ignoring Kagome.

"If we kill her, we'll have to dump the body somewhere. No matter where we put it, even if we chop it up to bits---"

"Thank you, chopped up into bits is a new fashion where I come from, but I can't seem to get the right look---"

"---the sweepers will find her, unless we put the bits into---into like a closet somewhere, and that'll start stinking. Maybe we could dump it in the ocean, but that's a long way away. Anyway, if it ever got found, it'd be traced back to us. If we shove her back into her world, the hot spot will activate and be left unchecked, which will make it look like she's still here. Those things aren't one way."

"And if we try to tell Boss what's going on..."

"We'll be fired for interrupting his coffee break, and then we'll be re-fired for not having an updated hot spots list, and then we'll be re-re-fired for being inadequate at our jobs. And, since she popped into the building itself, it'll be _our_ fault that our emergency transporters are acting up and randomly pulling humans into the demon world. The last time that happened, Yura was not only fired but _executed_ as well. They didn't even give her a fair trial."

"So what are we going to do with her?"

"We'll have to wait until some other human comes, and we'll push her through then," Miroku decided.

"But...but I want to go home..." Kagome said suddenly. If Inuyasha and Miroku had just been a little wiser on the ways of humans, they would have detected the oncoming sobs and started talking on a different subject. But if they were wise on anything at all they sure hid it well.

"What'll we do with her 'til then? It'll be another few months before another human stumbles in, and that's if we're lucky."

Kagome could feel the tears welling up in her eyes. That they were willing to keep her away from her home and family and friends and school...well, school wasn't so bad actually...

"We'll have to keep her back at the apartment, keep her hidden."

The tears started to fall.

"Why the hell are you crying, Ka-Kagome?!" Inuyasha asked, suddenly looking nervous. "We're going to put you back on the human world!"

"Y-you're going to put me b-back in several months, with complete s-strangers! I'll never see Mama again! Not Souta, not Grampa, not even fat, fat Buyo! How will I get into college if I can't finish my high school work?! I-I don't want to stay h-here with people who would kill me on the drop of a hat!"

Then Kagome did something that resulted in pure chaos.

Her nose started to run, and she desperately needed to wipe it on something. Inuyasha was standing just over her, flailing his arms as he tried to think of something to do. Miroku was looking on very nervously. Kagome sprung up and clung to Inuyasha and wiped her face against his tee-shirt with no shame. He howled and pushed her away, and then screamed and rolled on the floor, trying to get the tears and snot off of himself in the same fashion of "Stop, Drop, and Roll." Miroku went haywire and leapt around in a frenzy, looking for the emergency hose while shouting for help. Kagome tearfully stood by and watched as Inuyasha dragged himself along the floor like a dying caterpillar. Both men were screaming, and Inuyasha, the great dog demon Inuyasha who was known throughout the land as the toughest human-slayer around and whose face was on demon children's baseball cards, was on the verge of tears.

Kagome sniffled.

* * *

"I told you I'm not very deadly," Kagome said. Inuyasha looked at her menacingly and Miroku laughed nervously. Despite that neither had died from her attack, they were still very wary about her. Inuyasha was angry with her for causing such a panic in him. He was also upset that there was a stain on his "expensive" work polo (he hadn't been able to buy it at a garage sale, so it was considered to cost a fortune to him) and that he was drenched with water from the emergency hose.

The small group paused, peeking around the hallway for any sign of movement.

"Coast is clear," Inuyasha mumbled. They all trotted off across the room like fugitives. They then cleared the front doors and made a mad dash across the parking lot to Inuyasha's car, which was currently sitting in the Employee of the Month's spot. Kagome stuffed herself into the back seat and laid down so that she could not be seen. She had been reminded that they were doing her a favor by keeping her alive at all, and if anyone else found out that she was there, she would be killed on the spot. And then the two men would be fired, if not executed themselves. (And then Inuyasha would lose his good parking spot.)

"Are we going home?" Miroku asked.

"Where else would we go?" Inuyasha said.

"Well, I'd really like to go bowling," Kagome interjected. Inuyasha shot her a glare through the rearview mirror of his car.

"Maybe _Sango's_..." Miroku suggested hesitantly.

"You think Sango will help us?"

"Is Sango a girl? I don't really fancy staying with two males," Kagome added.

"She probably will."

"She might just toast Ka-Kagome," Inuyasha said, growling at the girl in the back seat. Kagome growled back. Inuyasha just wouldn't get her name right, even after she had corrected him several times. He always insisted on putting the extra _Ka_ in front. She was not sure if he was mocking her or if he was just stupid.

"Sango knew a human once, when she did her observation study," Miroku continued. Observation study was when they kept a human in the demon world for an entire week. It was thought that in this way they would learn new tactics to defend against deadly human attacks. Unfortunately they always seemed to catch duds; no one was ever able to show them a scary attack. "She'll know how to take care of one."

"I'm not an exotic pet or something, I can tell you how to take care of me, myself," Kagome insisted.

"How long have you known Sango, anyway? You seem to know an awful lot about her."

"You wound me, friend. How is it that I have known _you_ for years and yet you know nothing of me? Sango and I have been on a first name basis for the past fifty years."

"Fifty years?! Good grief, you guys are pretty good at keeping the aging to a minimum, you know. If you shared that secret with humans, you might be as famous as celebrities."

"Alright. Are you sure going to Sango is a good idea?" Inuyasha pursued, ignoring Kagome. He tapped his claws against the steering wheel as they stopped at a traffic signal. Kagome wanted to see if the colors of the traffic lights were the same as those in the human world, but Inuyasha made her keep her head down.

"Yes. She wouldn't turn us in, and she's the type to always lend a hand to a friend in need."

"If you say so," Inuyasha agreed and swerved over a few lanes. Kagome hit her head against the door handle and cracked her nose against arm rest.

"That really hurt," Kagome said in a pained voice. "You can't drive." She rubbed her head tenderly and curled up into a ball. Inuyasha watched the mirror in disgust as she wiped a thin trail of blood away from her face against his car's seat.

"Damn it, now I'm going to have to get a whole new set of seats back there," Inuyasha grumbled.

"I'm not that bad," Kagome moaned. "I think someone else should drive."

"Alright, Miroku, run in and get her real quick," Inuyasha ordered, parking the car in a firelane. "I'm not going to risk taking the human in there."

"Very well," Miroku said, hopping out of the sedan and sprinting across the sidewalk. Kagome pushed herself into a sitting position, despite Inuyasha's protesting, and watched Miroku disappear into the restaurant.

"Sit down, someone will see you."

"I _am_ sitting, and it's dark outside. No one can see into these windows in the dark."

"Demons can. I don't know about your puny eyes, but you're no needle in the haystack for a demon to find, now put your head down." Kagome sighed melodramatically and complied, ducking back down onto the seat. Moments later, her door opened and a demon woman carefully sat beside her, careful not to brush against her. Miroku took his place in the front passenger seat.

"A human, eh? You guys really do get yourselves in trouble," the woman said as she eyed Kagome warily.

"We didn't do anything this time," Inuyasha said nonchalantly, starting up the car again and pulling out of the parking lot at top-notch speed. Kagome had to use all of her strength to keep from slamming into Sango with the momentum of the car.

"Yeah, this time it was the mysterious cloaked figure," Kagome told the woman. "He chased me."

"So I see," the woman replied.

"Where are we going now?" Kagome piped up.

"Home," Inuyasha said.

"You mean, home for _you_. You aren't letting _me_ go home for months."

"Shut up. You're not important enough to lose a job over."

"Hah, hah, you jerk."

* * *

"I'm not sleeping on the floor. It'll make my neck stiff," Kagome told Inuyasha very seriously. Sango watched with interest from the chair. Miroku stood slightly behind Inuyasha as he argued with the dangerous human.

"Well, I don't want you touching my furniture!" Inuyasha yelled.

"Our furniture," Miroku corrected.

"That makes us sound gay," Inuyasha complained.

Kagome ignored this and climbed up on the back of the chair in which Sango sat. Sango shifted nervously to watch her, but Kagome only settled on the top and let her legs dangle down off the back. She scowled at Inuyasha as he and Miroku flinched and flailed and whined about the ruined chair.

"Well, I don't want to stay with you at all!" she argued as she jumped off of the chair and wandered deeper into the apartment. She poked her head into the rooms and Inuyasha trailed her like an angry shadow, making certain that she did not touch anything but unable to really stop her because he himself was too afraid to touch _her_.

To Inuyasha and Miroku, having her here was like having a dangerous pet. Like a panther or a tiger or a spider. That left a trail of poisonous goo anywhere it touched. So really, to them she was comparable to a one hundred pound snail with sharp teeth.

"I'm hungry," she told him. "I haven't eaten anything at all, all day."

"Sango? What do humans eat?" Inuyasha called as they went back into the living room.

"Can't you just ask me?! I can tell you what I eat!"

"I can make a human dish," Sango said and went off to Inuyasha and Miroku's kitchenette. "I learned while I took care of Kohaku." Kagome sighed wearily through her teeth.

"I don't very much like vegetables!" she warned Sango.

After she had eaten, Kagome went on a hunt for a bed. In one room, there was very soft-looking King-size bed. In the other bedroom, there was a Twin-size bed with many pillows. To have the best of both worlds, she crawled up into the Twin-size and seized the pillows, and then went back into the bedroom with the King-size bed. Both men wailed about their ruined beds and retreated into the living room, grumbling angrily. Sango went home for the night.

Kagome sighed contentedly and wove herself into the covers like a caterpillar in a cocoon. This slumber party was actually turning out better than the one she'd planned to have with Yuka, Eri, and Ayumi. At least here she got to sleep in a nice bed.


	2. Chapter 02: Everything Is a Conspiracy

DEMONS, INC.

Chapter 02: Common Sense Says Everything Is a Conspiracy!

* * *

Kagome blinked as the sun came streaming in through the high window in the bedroom she had claimed as her own. Groaning, she rolled over and fell off of the bed with a thump. She stayed on the floor for a moment until she finally found the energy to push herself up. Yawning and scratching her ear, Kagome made her way through the apartment into the kitchenette. She looked around the silent room.

No one else was around. So, she made herself at home.

She opened up the refrigerator and found things that could have been seen in any human's refrigerator. There was a carton of milk, a case of beer, three cans of lemonade, a jar of pickle relish, a bottle of ketchup that was beginning to change colors, and a Tupperware container with something spongy inside. Clearing her throat, she pulled out the carton of milk and took a drink straight from it, in the way of teenage boys in '90s sitcoms. She folded the lid and put it away and went to the cupboards.

She found crackers, a loaf of moldy bread, marshmallow cereal, and ground beef that should have been in the refrigerator.

There didn't seem to be much difference between the demon and human food groups, which made Kagome wonder why Sango had made her a "human dish" the previous night instead of a "demon dish." She also had to wonder where the ingredients for her "human dish" had come from.

Shrugging, she took the cereal and looked around the house for the television. On the coffee table in front of it was a note.

_We're going to work. We'll be back later this evening. Do not, under any circumstances, leave the apartment. Or we'll kill you._

"How very eloquent," Kagome remarked, rolling the paper into a ball. Carefully, she took aim at the framed photographs on the shelving by the television, gleaming cheerfully in the morning light. She threw the paper ball but didn't manage to knock a photograph over as planned. "Bummer."

She turned on the television and settled for watching it all day.

It was going to be a boring day.

* * *

Kagome did not, in fact, watch the television all day. Halfway through _The Years of Our Lives_, Kagome was brutally attacked. A ruthless, eight-legged killer with a heavy sense of bloodlust descended upon her like a fog, or a nightmare, or the eternal night. Kagome screamed and ran like a bat out of hell as the murderer chased her about the house.

After fifteen minutes, she firmed her resolve, gathered ammo, and retreated to safety, barricading her fortress.

"Oh, spidey!" she called from her perch on top of the refrigerator, her brother's shoe next to her like a trusty gun. Never mind how the shoe had gotten up there on its own. Everyone knows shoes are very crafty.

The spider scuttled along the tiled kitchen floor, its little legs hitting the floor silently. Kagome took aim and threw the television's remote control at it, barely missing the creature. The back of the remote control popped open, which resulted in the two batteries rolling away and the 5 button falling out. The spider rushed along the floor and then settled itself on top of one of the batteries. Kagome threw the milk carton. Milk went everywhere. It splattered the walls and the hapless spider. The batteries smoked and hissed when they were drenched, but did little else. The spider singed one of its claws on the battery and danced away.

"Gotcha! That potent liquid will slow ye down, oh mindless mutant!" Kagome cried bravely. The spider must not have heard her, because it frantically crawled all over the place as if it was on fire. There was no slowing down of that little guy. Kagome, vigilant, eyed the little devil as it ran in circles. "What have ye to say now, artful arachnid?!"

"Screeeeee!" was all it had to say.

"Is that so?" Kagome called and lifted up her next weapon. Rotting ground beef flew in all directions and the valiant spider lost a leg somewhere along the way. Who knew that ground beef was so dangerous? Kagome cheered herself onward, confident with her new victory. The spider limped along at an angle, trying to get out of the kitchen. Kagome had already craftily closed the door and stuck marshmallows underneath the cracks. The spider clawed at the barrier resentfully while Kagome gloated from on top of the refrigerator.

"Screee!"

"Scree yourself, you slimy simpleton!" Kagome quipped and threw paper plates the way one throws ninja stars. Every time a decorative holiday plate hit it, the spider let out one more scree. If Kagome knew what it was saying to her in spider-language, she might've used the bar of soap for her next weapon. But she was saving that for later.

"Screee!"

"Alas! I shall not let you free, you petulant pest!" she told it and prepared her next weapon. She shook up a beer can until she could hear it fizzing, and then she pulled the tab. She launched it in grenade-fashion. Foamy beer drenched the poor spider. The milky, beery, meat-covered spider's hairs clung to its body pitifully.

"Screeeeee...!"

"What ho! What will it take to do ye in, bothersome bug?!" She set off another beer grenade. The stream of beer managed to hit it at the right angle, and the spider was thrown against the door with the pressure of the beer. Another leg came off. Kagome lobbed the bar of soap. The spider lost two more legs and was left to drag itself pitifully across the ground, crying out against the abuse.

Kagome grunted and donned a wise expression, and she turned to the shoe.

"Well, shoe," she told her brother's shoe as if talking to a right-hand man, "it is down to you and I and one last grenade. I knew I should've grabbed the whole box."

Kagome picked up her head to get a better view of the weakened spider. "AHH!" she cried with terror, her eyes going wide. "It has called in reinforcements! We're _doomed!_"

With vigor, she shook up her final beer can and lobbed it at both spiders, drenching them. She leapt from the refrigerator, shoe in hand, and grabbed the rest of the beers. She took a flying leap over her enemies, swung the door open, and darted into the living room. She took a spot on top of the chair, watching the floor. The spiders scuttled around, leaving small trails of beer in the carpet.

She shook up another beer can and launched it. It hit the television, which didn't exactly make sense because the TV was on the opposite side of the room, but a new, highly attractive crack ran along the glossy glass surface anyhow. The much abused spider died in the attack. It was left on the battlefield, legs curling pitifully, as the other spider, still fresh although a little beery, skittered around and cried. It climbed up the wall and onto the shelving, where it tried to hide behind a picture frame. Kagome shook up another beer and lobbed it, ducking behind the chair as the can exploded when it hit the wall. The picture frames toppled down, domino-style, and the spider climbed along the wreckage valiantly. Streams of beer ran down the wall. Broken glass littered the shelving and floor.

Kagome grabbed one of Miroku's naughty magazines from the coffee table and rolled it up. Using Souta's shoelace, she tied it together tightly. She threw it as one would throw a harpoon, or a javelin. It hit the spider and it lost four legs in the attack. It then fell to the ground from its place on the shelf.

"Aha!" Kagome cried. She leapt back up on top of the chair and gripped her last beer can in one hand, shoe in the other. She kissed the beer can the way one kisses something precious before letting it go forever, and she launched it. The television earned a second crack and the can exploded. Bits of aluminum went everywhere and the entire place was covered and dripping with alcohol.

The chase went into the bedroom with the Twin-size bed.

* * *

"I hope that the human isn't getting into any trouble," Inuyasha told Miroku as they watched the blank security monitors. Inuyasha's eyes were in bad shape, with dark black circles underneath them and a tired glaze over them. Oh, how he already missed his bed...his big, comfortable, warm, soft bed that would have to be immediately destroyed as soon as the bratty human went home.

"She's probably still asleep," Miroku consoled warily, his eyes in much the same state. He balanced a pencil on his nose and hummed the theme song to some television show he had seen earlier that week. The door to the television room opened with a creak. Miroku's pencil fell to the floor with an ominous clatter.

"Hello, boys," Kagura said slowly, peeking her head into the room. Her shadow stretched into the dim room and covered them both. Both men looked up at her as if they had been caught doing something wrong. "You haven't noticed anything..._strange_ lately, have you?"

"No. Why?" Inuyasha lied easily. Like humans popping into the hallway was perfectly normal...

"No reason," she said, although she looked a bit angry. She left the room, muttering something about incompetence, and safely closed the door behind her.

"You don't think..."

"But I do..." Miroku corrected.

"Conspiracy!" Inuyasha whispered sharply, launching himself forward in his rolling chair and hitting his desk with a fist. "We've got to think of something. We can't keep the human around much longer. Kagura's already getting suspicious."

"Hmm. How about we bait a human here? That way we can push her back into the human world sooner."

"How can we do that without opening up a hot spot?"

"Let me ponder," Miroku ordered. He snatched up his pencil and stuffed the eraser into his mouth thoughtfully. He spun in his rolling chair in a few circles.

"...Let's go home for lunch now," Inuyasha said. "I'm hungry."

"You're right. And the human is undoubtedly hungry, as well."

* * *

"_Mother of pearl!_" Kagome cried, dropping her brother's shoe and cradling her foot in her hands. She had stepped on a shard of glass from the mirror in the bathroom. With a grunt, Kagome pulled the shard out of her heel, clucking at the bleeding appendage.

Panting, Kagome retrieved the shoe she had dropped and limped from the bathroom, pressing onward like a true warrior, leaving behind bloody footprints as proof of loyalty to her cause. The spider, like any wise bug would, had taken to hiding somewhere. Kagome was not to be deterred.

She paused in the hallway, absolutely silent. The sounds of running water, dripping beer, and a strange sizzling reached her ears. Then came a faint scratching. With a passionate war cry, she launched herself forward to the spider's hiding place, gripping the shoe, and ran into the sofa full force. The heavy piece of furniture scooted forward several inches and tipped dangerously. Kagome overbalanced and ran into it again on accident, and it fell forward completely and hit the coffee table. The coffee table flipped over, leaning against the fallen sofa.

"Screee!"

Kagome turned to that dangerous noise and panted wildly. After she caught sight of the spider, she sounded off another war cry and flew forward, smashing the bug with the shoe.

Splayed out on the floor as if she had been shot, her arms flung tragically forward as if reaching for a last hope, hair dripping, foot bloody, covered in beer and milk, panting, sweaty, face flushed...she was the image of any good war hero.

And that was how Inuyasha and Miroku found her.

For a moment, no one said anything. Kagome remained as she was, panting and looking absolutely spent. Inuyasha felt his eye twitch. Miroku swallowed muddily at the disaster spread out before him.

And then, Inuyasha spoke with the voice of great reason from above, "What the _fuck_ happened here?"

"A great battle," Kagome said sagely. "A very great battle indeed."

* * *

Inuyasha and Miroku had not been happy with the state of their house. Kagome had not cared.

Inuyasha had spent a half hour ranting and poking around the tattered apartment. He had nearly electrocuted himself on the television cord when he was blotting up beer, and he had almost burned a finger on a smoking battery when he was throwing them away. Miroku had resignedly gotten out a trash bag, broom, and dust pan and set to work. Kagome had taken care of her wounded foot, which had started to swell.

After that episode, they had eaten the food Inuyasha and Miroku brought home from a fast food restaurant. Sango had given suggestions on foods for Kagome, and they at least had the decency to bring her fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, and mashed potatoes, because that had been Kohaku's favorite dish. Kagome couldn't complain because it was probably one of her favorites, too.

When all was eaten, Inuyasha and Miroku had the _audacity_ to bind Kagome's hands with a pillowcase before they left for work again.

Kagome scooted over to the window as they left. She watched the deep red car pull out from its parking spot and take off in the opposite direction. She followed the road with her eyes until her gaze came to rest on the city. Peaking over the other buildings, Demons, Inc. could be seen, tall and wide as a mountain.

Kagome waited several minutes.

And then she waited several more.

And then she looked down to her tied hands, bound as they were with a pink candy-striped pillowcase with a pair of woolly mittens over them to prevent her fingers from taking any individual action. With a snort, Kagome walked over to the kitchen and teased open a drawer on the island with her elbow. Wriggling her way up on to to the island with a great amount of acrobatic talent, she used her feet, very skillfully, to pull out a butter knife. Bending her hands down to her feet, she poked the butter knife through the center of the knot in the pillow case and plowed through it. The pillowcase fell harmlessly away. She pulled off the mittens that were around her fingers and dropped them to the floor.

Kagome returned the knife to the drawer and hoped Inuyasha used it on his pancakes.

Dusting off her hands, Kagome set to work. She had a new objective.

And that was getting home. She missed her mother. She missed her grandfather. She missed her brother, friends, cat, bedroom, and pink shower curtains. Mostly the pink curtains.

Kagome trooped into the first bedroom and dug around in a laundry hamper. She pulled out a tee-shirt that, as she could tell from a sniff, smelled like a demon. She shed her own tee-shirt and donned the new one. Then she moved to the next bedroom, where she pillaged a pair of used blue jeans. With some disgust, she traded her own for the borrowed pair, and substituted a sweatshirt for a belt, because the pants were much too big. She rolled up the legs a great deal, as well, since they were also much too long.

Looking something like a 90s middle school punk without the jacket, she then went into the bathroom, sprayed herself with Miroku's cologne, Inuyasha's aftershave, and someone's demon deodorant.

"Now I smell like a very odorous demon," she announced to no one in particular. At least, there should have been no one, unless the spiders were back...

Shaking the spider incident clearly out of mind, she tromped back to the living room and stood by the front door. Her hand wavered over the doorknob anxiously as she considered staying put, as she had been told.

_"I swear if you cause any more fucking trouble, I'll fucking rip you to pieces, got it?!" Inuyasha yelled at her._

_"And I shall not stop him," Miroku admonished, looking like a librarian telling a patron he had one too many overdue books and was never allowed to lend from that establishment again._

_"It's not my fault your house is overrun by spiders. I also don't have anything better to do," Kagome said breezily. Inuyasha and Miroku were, both of them, all bark and no bite._

_"I don't fucking care. One more step out of line, and I'll make your death painful and slow."_

_"Aye, aye, captain," Kagome answered, smiling winningly._

_"I don't think you understand," Miroku said suddenly. He looked very serious. "Not only did you make a mess of our apartment, but you made a lot of noise. Kagome, we've told you several times...anyone else here would have you killed immediately. We're at least trying to help you."_

_"Yeah, on top of that, we're risking our asses doing so. We'd be in more trouble if they found out we're keeping your sorry ass hidden. If we turned you in, we might just get fired. If we get caught with you, we'll be punished with anything from prison to execution. Get it?"_

_"Yeah, yeah," Kagome said, waving her hand dismissively but feeling a bit uneasy. "I didn't mean to make a mess. I got carried away."_

_"Whatever," Inuyasha said, rolling his eyes._

Kagome might have stayed put after that. She felt guilty. But then Inuyasha told her she smelled like shit and he bound her hands. Miroku said bondage was kinky. She did not feel so guilty anymore.

Kagome opened the door and trotted down the stairs. "Demons, Inc., here I come..."

* * *

During Kagome's first visit to Demons, Inc., she had seen a hallway lined with identical white doors. On silver plates nailed to the doors were the names of places Kagome had seen on the hot spots list. She would just have to take her chances and go through one door. Hopefully, it would open up to the human world. Whatever authorities she came to, in where ever she landed, she would simply say she had no idea how she got to where she was. Everyone knows that if you claim ignorance, you get away with most anything.

Yeah, that would work.

Kagome made it through the city without a passing glance from anyone else to suggest someone knew she was a human in disguise. One demon had gagged as she walked by her and had to clamp a large blue hand over her slitted nose, but that was all the excitement there was. Kagome was not accustomed to smelling so badly that she was avoided in public, but she was grateful that her highly clever disguise was fooling everyone. Even if she did smell like a combination of her two least favorite men. Well, except for her math teacher...that man could assign homework like no tomorrow.

Once in the Demons, Inc. building she sneaked around the lobbies and rooms, and poked her way through restricted areas (which was by far the most fun of the venture). She worked her way through dizzying hallways and she avoided the elevator. She paused whenever she saw someone coming, just for good measure, and she took her time in picking directions. She did not want to be kicked out and have to do it again. Plus, she wanted to feel like a top secret government spy.

When she came around a corner of what had previously been a quiet hallway, she saw a man and a woman talking feverishly in hushed tones. She ducked behind a partially opened door and tried to calm her hammering heart as they paused near where she was standing.

"Are you sure?" the man said.

"Yes," said the woman with an impatient tone. "Those two morons wouldn't know a human from a pickle."

"So the human is loose in the city somewhere?"

"I believe so," the woman replied, looking weary. She took a long drag of her cigarette. The smoke drowned out any other scent, thankfully for Kagome.

"Fuck. Send out a team, will you? We're going to be in so much fucking trouble."

The woman scowled and dropped some ash from her cigarette to the floor. "Why don't _you_ send out a team?"

"My team's guarding all the hot spots. If the human so much as tries to get back, we'll nab it. It's your responsibility to clean out the city."

"What if it can't be found? What if it's moved on? Or what if it's dead?"

"Why are you asking me?" the man asked, raising an eyebrow. "But for all our sakes, I hope it is found. I don't want to be on the boss' bad side. And I definitely don't want Demons, Inc. to know what we've been doing."

"Alright, alright," the woman said, waving her hand. She sighed and tossed a strand of hair away from her eyes. "I'll start with those two nincompoops' apartment. I'll call you if I find anything."

"Great. See you later, babe."

"Don't start that shit," the woman said with a hard glare, tapping her cigarette out on his shoe. "Are you going back down to the hot spots?"

"Nah, my team is already down there. I'm going to go deliver a message to my brother."

"Fine," the woman said. She turned and walked down the hallway very gracefully. The man spun on his heel, muttered, and disappeared from view. Kagome, although her heart was pounding and her legs felt like jelly, crept along behind the man carefully. She kept a good distance and didn't make a sound.

The man turned into a room suddenly, and Kagome stood nearby. The door closed and she pressed her ear against it.

"Boss wants me to deliver a message, little brother," came the first man's muffled voice.

"What message?" the second half-snarled.

"'Fifteen hours.'"

"And that's supposed to mean...?" the second man asked self-importantly, although his tone seemed to waver.

"Don't kid around, little brother. You'd be a fool if this doesn't get taken care of."

"Alright," the younger said with a weary sigh. "I'll take care of this tonight. This is such messy business..."

"Boss is a messy businessman," the first quipped. "Well, then..." the voice tapered off as Kagome gathered her wits, swallowed muddily, and dashed down the hallway.

* * *

"So there we all were, sitting around the campfire, and I was just about to yell Uno when---"

Someone knocked at the door. Inuyasha and Miroku looked up as it opened a crack. A nervous beam of light jiggled as the person who opened the door tried to decide whether or not they wanted to come in. Finally, the person decided to and closed the door behind herself.

"Guys!" Kagome whispered hoarsely. "There's some real trouble!"

"The fuck are you doing here?!" Inuyasha hissed, snarling. "That's _it,_ bitch, it's time to die!"

"Wait!" Kagome squeaked, holding up her hands in a pacifying gesture. "There's real trouble! Please don't kill me!"

"What 'real trouble?' More spiders?" Inuyasha taunted.

"Let's hear the lady first," Miroku said.

"Okay...Okay, I'll admit! I shouldn't be here! I was going to go through one of the hot spots doors---"

"Uncooperative, ungratef---"

"And I hid in this hallway when I saw two people coming. They paused by my door and..." Kagome told them the tale, complete with expressive hand gestures and false voices. She only fell over once. Kagome then went on to describe the people she had seen, from the tall, overly groomed woman who smoked a cigarette to the even taller man with black hair and his younger brother whom she had not seen.

"Kagura..." Inuyasha and Miroku muttered simultaneously.

"But who were the brothers?" Miroku wondered.

"It's a conspiracy!" Inuyasha insisted, thumping his hand against the table. "Oh, fuck! And she's going to go break into the apartment! She'll smell Ka-Kagome all over the place! As if calling us names wasn't bad enough!"

"I doubt she'll smell Kagome," Miroku said dubiously. "There was so much beer that the scent of alcohol drowns the smell all out. Didn't you notice as we were leaving?"

"So my battle did pay off! Other than saving me from a messy death-by-spider..." Kagome mused, tapping her chin thoughtfully.

"What're we going to do now?" Inuyasha sulked. "They've got people watching all the hot spots...They're sweeping the city..."

"We're doomed!" Kagome wailed despairingly. It seemed like the appropriate thing to do.

* * *

Later that evening, back at the apartment, Kagome, still dressed in her assortment of stolen clothes, was sitting on the floor and going through her own jeans pockets for treasure. She pulled out her note on nail polish from Yuka. She discarded that. She pulled out her wallet. She put that in her lap. Finally, she pulled out a chocolate wrapper that had acquired extra crinkles from a trip through the washing machine. She plunged her hand into the other pocket and found a half-eaten peppermint, which she popped into her mouth.

"I'm starving," she announced to her demon companions, who were pacing anxiously and talking secretively out of her hearing range by the front door. Kagome turned her pockets inside out and shook her pants upside down, smacking on her peppermint. Inuyasha and Miroku both paused talking and looked over at her. Both donned looks of shame and Miroku looked nearly ready to cry, although Kagome missed this priceless Kodak moment as she stuck her nose in a pocket.

"...Stay here," Inuyasha ordered her. "If you obey, we'll let you have dinner."

Kagome blinked as the two men went into the kitchenette, closing the door behind them. She narrowed her eyes suspiciously and crawled across the hallway. She pressed her ear against the door and listened.

"---op her into little, very teeny-tiny bits, and then feed her to someone's pet...Sango's cat or something...that would work," Inuyasha said. Kagome's mouth dropped in horror, her peppermint sticking to her tongue.

"Oh, come on, man...I feel really bad about this," Miroku whispered back nervously. Kagome could hear his feet shuffle against the tile as he moved around restlessly.

"She's ruining our lives! How can you feel bad?!" Inuyasha hissed through his teeth. Kagome glowered at the door.

"Fine. Do you want to kill her? You do the honors," Miroku quipped. Kagome began to panic.

Inuyasha remained silent and Kagome couldn't hear him moving.

"You can't do it, can you?" Miroku said in a gentler tone.

"If we had done it right away, then maybe...but..."

"Yeah, now we've lived with her for two days. So now it's harder...It would feel like murder." Kagome nodded to herself encouragingly, her panic abating. She would make it through this...

"So what do we do?!"

Kagome crawled back into the other room and began searching her jeans' back pockets. And then she noticed something strange. From the angle at which she sat on the floor, she could see a small, coin-sized object clinging to the side of the sofa's leg. She scooted over to it and picked it off, examining it carefully.

"What've you got there, bitch?" Inuyasha said warily as they came back into the room. Kagome held the little black object up so that Inuyasha could see it better. The men both paled. Inuyasha lunged forward, grabbed the object from her, and then crushed it between his fingers. It hissed and spluttered. Inuyasha swore as he dropped the smoking device, and he sucked on his burned finger.

"Seems Kagura has more faith in us than she pretends..." Miroku murmured. "Let's check the rest of the apartment."

"...Was that a bug?" Kagome asked, cocking her head curiously.

"Yes," Miroku answered.

"...Awesome," Kagome said. "I've always wanted to be in a spy movie." Then she choked on the last shards of her peppermint.

* * *

Kagome flipped through television channels, munching on marshmallow cereal. Miroku had gone into work and Inuyasha had called in sick so that he could keep an eye on Kagome. (Whether because someone was after her or because she had a habit of making a mess, she did not know.) Inuyasha was closed off in the kitchen, talking to his mother on the telephone. Kagome could hear the middle-aged woman wail from time to time.

Kagome paused when she came to a news flash, marred by the two cracks she had given the otherwise smooth television screen. Her jaw stopped working as she watched.

"---found dead in their suburban home this morning. Arata Fox, whom we all know from the hit television show _The Years of Our Lives _as the beloved Sabrina, was reported to have three shot wounds, as well as several stab wounds. Hisoka Fox, a hunter for the Small Game Team A, was brutally stabbed to death. The murderer was thorough in leaving no evidence behind, which suggests that the killer is a professional. The couple's young son was away at a friend's house when this tragedy occurred. The child is currently safe and is staying with his kindergarten teacher Hina..."

"Yikes..." Kagome muttered. "I guess the human world isn't the only one with crazy murderers."

"In other news, diet milk might be linked---"

"Diet milk...sheesh. Nothing but whole milk for me," Kagome said and turned off the television. She stretched in a very catlike fashion and pattered off to the kitchen with her trusty box of cereal. "Have you seen my other shoe?"

"Why would I have seen your shoe?" Inuyasha asked, hanging the telephone up and looking a little pale.

"Well, I haven't seen it since last night," Kagome explained as she began poking around in drawers and cupboards. "But I haven't seen my socks since I got here."

"I saw one of your socks in the sink."

"Oh. Huh," Kagome said and smiled. "My footwear eludes me."

* * *

"Alright. I'll be stopping by the store on the way home from work," Miroku said during lunch break that day, massaging his temples. Kagome kicked her legs happily under the table as she munched on a sandwich. "Does anyone need anything?"

"I'd like my own toothbrush," Kagome said through a mouthful of Italian (well, it was technically Pitalian sausage since she was in the demon world) sausage. "I've been using someone else's."

"...Which one?" Miroku asked as the two demons blanched in fear, both praying it was the other's toothbrush.

"The pink one with a cherry-patterned Band-Aid around the middle. It was the pretty one," Kagome said breezily, licking tomato sauce away from the corner of her mouth and crossing her eyes as she concentrated.

"AHHHH!" Inuyasha screamed. He rushed to the sink and stuck his mouth underneath the steady stream of water, all the while as he stomped one foot against the floor repeatedly with enough vivacity to rival square dancing. He kneed the cupboard and his toes curled up. He looked very pained and tearful, as if he had just swallowed bubblegum-flavored antibiotics.

"I popped someone's personal bubble," Kagome said nonchalantly and took another bite of her sandwich. Miroku looked caught between relief and horror, but he consolingly moved to his friend's side and patted his back in a comforting fashion.

"I'll get you a new one, my friend."

"I won't need one!" Inuyasha insisted in a hoarse hiss, slapping Miroku's arm away. Spitty water flew everywhere and his eyes teared up. "My lovely, beautiful, pearly white fangs will rot and fall out by the end of the week...I've been sharing a toothbrush with a human..."

"I thought we got over this," Kagome said, her voice skeptic. "I'm not dangerous!"

"My life is _over!_" Inuyasha mourned as he sunk to his knees.

"...You know, my friends would say that's like we've indirectly kissed," Kagome said, half-grinning, imagining her three friends pounce on Inuyasha. Inuyasha's eyes widened and he lunged back to the stainless steel sink, his whines and cries all the louder.

"That was not very nice," Miroku told Kagome. The girl just wiggled her nose as a spot of tomato sauce from her sandwich appeared there.

"You guys probably don't want to know what I've done to the milk if this is how you react," Kagome said, a glint in her eye. Both men stiffened.

* * *

Comments: _Thank you for the reviews! _Sorry if I went overboard with the spider scene. I was having a lot of fun and got carried away, but didn't have the heart to trim it like I do most scenes... **McA**, if it can be worked in, I will gladly do a Sesshoumaru and Kagura bit. :) **valdevenator 01**, sure, I'll try to work in the shaving thing (hehee...Inuyasha being shaven...)! Hmm, there's Jaken, even though he might as well be bald...

Next chapter: When Your Dirty Socks Go Bump in the Night! Shippou enters, a trip to the mountains, and monsters in the closet!


	3. Chapter 03: When Your Dirty Socks Go

DEMONS, INC.

Chapter 03: When Your Dirty Socks Go Bump in the Night

* * *

Kagome was hiding underneath the bed---but only for a very good reason. She was hiding from a very angry demon. Why? Well...

"You dirty fucking human, get your sorry ass out here! My socks will _not _stand for this abuse!"

How was_ she _supposed to know Inuyasha's socks were highly flammable?

Kagome held her breath as Inuyasha walked around the bedroom. His feet slowly padded against the burgundy carpet. He peeked into the closet, fluffed the unmade bed sheets, and then turned to walk the other way. Kagome's nose tickled. She wiggled it, pleading to whatever deity listening that she could hold still long enough to elude Inuyasha. Oh, _why_ had she felt the need to put Inuyasha's sock in the microwave? When Inuyasha's foot steps were gone, Kagome let out her breath.

"Hello, bitch," Inuyasha said as he flopped down to the floor and looked under the bed.

"Um...hi?" Kagome said, smiling tentatively. She scooted away as Inuyasha swiped at her. The wiggle in her nose finally got the best of her. She sneezed on him.

"Holy fuck! I'm melting!"

Kagome took the distraction to her advantage and squirmed out from underneath the bed. She took off at her fastest sprint as Inuyasha moaned and pushed himself off of the floor. During her frantic trek to safety, Kagome collided with something solid. Both figures went sprawling in opposite directions, and two grocery bags went up into the air.

"Oh, good afternoon, Sango!" Kagome chirped, righting herself and running into the kitchenette, where she hid in the cupboard underneath the sink. Sango blinked after her and then dusted off her shirt. She then went on to pick up her bags as Inuyasha came into the room, dripping wet as if he had just dunked himself into the bath tub (in reality, he dunked himself in the toilet. It was quicker).

"Has the disgusting human been through here?"

Sango motioned to the kitchen. Inuyasha smirked and trotted in there. A blood-curdling scream followed.

Sango shook her head and, almost grudgingly, went into the kitchen to begin supper.

* * *

Kagome wormed deep into the thick, warm covers, clicked off the bedside light, and buried her face between the fluffy pillows. She sighed deeply and closed her eyes; sleepy, warm, and comfortable. A half an hour passed. Kagome was dozing.

_Ka-thunk-thump-thump._

Kagome shot up from the bed and sat staring at the closet. Her heart thumped painfully in her chest, her breath came raggedly, and her face pricked.

_Thu-thump._

"Aaaaah!" Kagome cried out in a sharp screech, twisting around in the bed sheets as she attempted to get out of bed. She tripped and landed on her head. "Help!" she begged, continuing to scream, as she squirmed and tried to free herself from the twisted bedding.

"What the hell's going on in here?!" Inuyasha snapped groggily as he swung the door open.

"There's a monster in the closet!" Kagome informed him, scrambling up from the floor to stand behind Inuyasha who, with a twitching eye, stared at the closet door. Kagome whimpered and clutched his arm.

"There's no fucking monster in there," Inuyasha explained, turning to face her and looking grouchy as he pulled his arm out of her grasp.

"Yes there is!" Kagome insisted, nearly hysterical. "I _heard _it! I heard it!"

"There's nothing in there but...dirty socks," Inuyasha assured. "Dirty socks and a couple pairs of slacks."

"And a monster!" Kagome added.

"No! Just clothes!"

"_There's a monster!_" Kagome hissed and punched Inuyasha in the shoulder. Inuyasha scowled at her. Kagome was too frightened to feel successful when he didn't make a comment about her toxic skin in response to her contact, only rub his shoulder tenderly.

"Fine. If I check the closet, will you go back to bed?!"

"Yes," Kagome answered earnestly.

Inuyasha turned and walked to the closet, rolling his eyes and muttering. He popped open the door. "_Fuck!_" he yelled.

"Aaaaah!" Kagome yelped again and ran out of the room. "Miroku, Miroku! Inuyasha's being eaten by a monster!"

"Monster?" Miroku gurgled sleepily as Kagome jumped on the arm rest of the chair in which he was sleeping.

"Go! Protect your friend! We're going to die!" Kagome forecasted. She never really stopped to think about _why_ she was so afraid of monsters-in-the-closet. But if demons existed, so did monsters, and monsters did not think about whom they killed. Especially the ones in the closet. Those were particularly ruthless.

There came a rough clatter from the bedroom---probably the lamp falling over---and Kagome screamed shrilly again. Miroku rubbed his eyes clear of sleep and trotted down the hall in confusion. Kagome followed him after grabbing a can of lemonade from the kitchen, prepared to defend herself if necessary.

"How the hell did you get in here, fox?!" Inuyasha growled to the small demon he gripped by the tail.

"I ran awaaaay!" the fox child replied, scraping around. "I had no where to go-oo!"

Kagome nervously peeked over Miroku's shoulder, lemonade can tight in her grasp. "Is this the monster?"

"Not a monster...just a pest," Inuyasha said with a sigh.

"I knew there was something in there!" Kagome boasted, stepping closer to the fox demon and Inuyasha.

"Shippou," Inuyasha said, grumping at the little fox. At hearing the name, Miroku turned and went to bed, muttering with annoyance. "Go sleep in the other room. Tomorrow we'll think of something to do with you."

"Okay!" the fox chirped and scampered off.

"And you!" Inuyasha said, wheeling on Kagome. "Give me that!" he ordered and grabbed the drink. "Good riddance!"

"Um...good night?" Kagome called uncertainly when Inuyasha stepped into the hallway, shaking his head and growling as he closed the door.

"Yeah, yeah," Inuyasha muttered and walked away. Kagome stood in the dark for several moments. She wandered carefully over to the bed and seated herself in the middle.

Something tapped on the balcony door.

"Aaaah!"

"What now?" Inuyasha called from down the hallway, voice muffled with the distance.

"Monster!"

"There're _no monsters_," he said, the door flying open again. He bared his fangs dangerously. They glinted in the moonlight coming in from the slit in the curtains and reminded Kagome of the teeth of a monster she had seen on television once.

"That's not very reassuring!" Kagome whined, even more terrified than before. "I heard something!"

"Where this time?" Inuyasha half-snarled, hoping no more of his cousins had showed up. Not that he had any more cousins. Nothing like a middle of the night scare for a family reunion, though.

"On the window..."

Inuyasha walked over there and drew back the dark red curtain, Kagome trailing him closely. Nothing. He peeked around and slid open the long glass door, meandering out to the balcony. Nothing. He looked over the railing, up into the sky, and back at the apartment.

"There isn't anything out here," he informed her angrily, sliding the window closed behind him and re-adjusting the curtains.

"But I heard something," Kagome whimpered as Inuyasha bumbled out of the room. "Wait! Don't go!"

"_Whaaaat?_" Inuyasha demanded, throwing his arms into the air hopelessly. Kagome tapped her fingers together anxiously and looked up at Inuyasha pleadingly.

"Can...ah...can you stay with me?"

"What?!" Inuyasha barked, now alert and glaring. "Why the hell do you want me in here for?!"

"Because, ahh...if a monster comes in..."

"You ran off last time. You don't have much faith in me," Inuyasha said sarcastically.

"Just until I fall asleep? Please?" Kagome pleaded.

"...Fine," Inuyasha sighed resignedly. Kagome climbed up into bed and nestled into the blankets after straightening them out from the tumble she had taken. Inuyasha sat down on the floor by the bed, leaning his back against it and growling very slightly.

"Night night," Kagome murmured sleepily.

"Just shut up and go to sleep," Inuyasha ordered.

* * *

The following morning, everyone sat around the kitchen table (some on chairs and some on substitutes for chairs---Shippou even sat on the table itself) in varying degrees of grumpiness, eating breakfast.

Miroku mumbled and poked at his eggs as if he couldn't tell they were food.

5.5!

Sango, who had come over again in the morning to cook breakfast, looked thoughtful and troubled, eating slowly and occasionally narrowing her eyes.

A measly 2.5!

Shippou yawned continuously, looked very mopey, and flicked things at people from time to time.

Hmm... 7.9!

Inuyasha flung eggs at anyone who annoyed him, stole everyone else's eggs when he ran out, yelled, grumbled, complained, swore, and snorted.

A whopping 10.0!

Kagome was the only one in a good mood, feeling well enough to judge the morning antics of her makeshift care-takers.

"I think someone needs a vacation," she said cheerfully, indicating the whole grumpy table. Everyone stopped eating---except for Shippou---and turned to stare at her as if she had said something that was at once great and terrible. "What?" she asked.

"That's a brilliant idea!" Sango said, suddenly enthusiastic. "You guys haven't taken a vacation at all this year, so your vacation time has added up. You need to get out of the apartment and somewhere hidden, where Kagura won't find you."

"Perfect! Ayame has a vacation cabin up in the mountains, we can ask to borrow it," Miroku mused.

"Right! Kagura would never think of looking in Ayame's vacation spot!" Inuyasha added, scooping some of Sango's eggs into his mouth.

"...Am I a super genius or what?" Kagome asked.

"Don't push your luck," Inuyasha said. "But we'll have to get Ayame to swear to secrecy..." he murmured suddenly. "Which'll be a pain, because she's nosey...she'll want to know why."

"Oh, don't worry about her. She and I go way back---I'll tell her the whole story and she'll be glad to lend a hand," Sango assured, waving her fork in the air and flinging a bit of egg onto Miroku, who didn't seem to notice when it hit him on the forehead.

"Yay! We're going to the mountains!" Kagome cheered and then went back to her eggs.

* * *

"What are you doing?" Shippou asked Kagome later that afternoon. Kagome was leaning over the balcony with a ketchup bottle, squirting out drops from time to time to the grassy ground below.

"Releasing the condiments back into the wild," Kagome said easily without even looking at the fox demon as he jumped up onto the edge of the stone balcony to look down at the mess she was making.

"Cool. Can I help?"

"Sure. Go get the pickle relish."

Shippou dashed off to the kitchen and came back minutes later with the jar of pickle relish, unscrewing the lid and flicking chunks of the spread down to the ground to mingle with the ketchup.

"Why are we releasing com-i-dants into the wild?" Shippou asked as if realizing what he was doing for the first time.

"Would _you_ like to be bottled and spread as glops onto fast food?"

"...Good point," Shippou agreed and flung another chunk to the ground.

"Just don't let Miroku and Inuyasha know."

"'Kay," Shippou promised.

"Go, ketchup blob, go!" Kagome cheered. The blob ignored her, but Kagome didn't seem to mind.

"What kind of demon are you?" Shippou asked, flicking another glop down to the ground. "I don't recognize what you smell like."

"I'm not a demon," Kagome said, poking out her tongue from the corner of her mouth in concentration, aiming her ketchup bottle for the man walking his three-headed dog. "I'm a human." She squirted the bottle.

"Really?! That's so cool! Can you burn grass down with your breath? Do you have laserbeam eyes? Can you spit poison? Can you grow extra arms?"

"Nope," Kagome said, snapping her fingers as her ketchup blob fell short and hit the dog on its right head instead. Kagome ducked down when its owner looked around for the assailant, the dog woofing and howling from three different mouths. Shippou ducked down next to her, leaning against the stone balcony.

"Damn!" Shippou swore.

"Who taught you that?!" Kagome asked, looking disgusted.

"Inuyasha," he answered breezily, flicking bits of pickle relish off of his fingers.

"Oh. So, why are you here anyway?" Kagome asked. Inuyasha had tried to ask several times, but Shippou had only changed the subject. Miroku had tried to ask, and had only been kicked in the face. Kagome had not been around to witness any of these events. Luckily for her, Shippou seemed to trust her well enough.

"My parents died...I was going to stay with my mom's friend, but she didn't want to keep me there because she was scared. I went to stay with my Auntie Izayoi, but she babies me and cries all the time...so I came here."

"Oh, that's terrible, Shippou," Kagome answered. If Shippou didn't want to be babied..."Is Inuyasha your...cousin, then?" she guessed.

"Yep," Shippou said, peeking over the balcony.

"I pity you," Kagome declared, fiddling with the cap on the ketchup bottle.

"I pity me, too," Shippou agreed. "The dog-walker is gone."

"Yay," Kagome said, pushing herself off the ground and squirting the bottle again. Having become bored, Shippou chucked the entire jar of relish. Chunks flew out as it spun and wheeled across its torrential path downwards. It collided with a tree and splattered tremendously, dousing the area in pickle relish. Too bad Shippou hadn't see the man coming around the apartment complex from the parking lot.

"What the fuck are you two morons doing?!" he called up to them.

Inuyasha had caught them, showered by Shippou's pickle relish.

* * *

"I have some good news and some bad news," Sango said as she allowed herself into the apartment, arms full of supper.

"Good news first!" Kagome said excitedly, grabbing fast food bags from Sango and putting them on the kitchen table, digging around until she came to a box of fried chicken. These particular demons seemed to eat a lot of fast food, especially fried chicken.

Shippou jumped onto her shoulder and helped her poke around for the best pieces of chicken. The two piled their food onto one paper plate and then moved onto the gravy, which they applied liberally, guaranteeing a mess. Luckily for the two of them, they found messes very fun.

"What news, lovely Sango?" Miroku asked, rounding up the rest of the party to hear what Sango had to say.

"Ayame knows everything and is allowing us to use her cabin," Sango explained.

"And the bad news?" Inuyasha asked, scooping mashed potatoes onto his paper plate.

"She wants to come with."

"That isn't so bad."

"...And she's bringing Kouga."

"Holy_ fuck_, why Kouga?!"

"Wolves will be wolves," Sango said, claiming a piece of chicken for herself. "They'll only be staying for a day or two, and they aren't coming until later in the week. To check up on us, if you will. You two got your request put in, didn't you?"

"Yep," Inuyasha said.

"We're off starting tomorrow," Miroku explained, dropping some beans onto his plate.

"Well. It seems like Shippou's the bravest of you men," Sango said, quirking an eyebrow as she noticed Kagome and Shippou sharing a piece of chicken with no reserve, dipping their chunks into the same slop of gravy and tearing shreds of meat off of each other's discarded pieces.

"What?!" Inuyasha yelped, looking very incredulous.

"What, what? I'm very brave!" Shippou defended, smacking his lips. "...What am I being brave about...uh, _this_ time?"

"You're sharing supper with a human, Shippou..." Miroku said uneasily.

"So?"

"So, you're going to turn into fucking ash!" Inuyasha explained indignantly.

"Nuh-uh, she can't do that stuff," Shippou said, licking gravy off of his fingers. "Kagome's not going to attack me. Right, Kagome?"

"Right, right. Shippou is the first one to act completely hospitable towards me," Kagome said, waving a finger in the air accusingly. "Whereas Inuyasha and Miroku discuss how to kill me, and Sango avoids me!"

"Yep!" Shippou agreed. "I'm a real gentleman."

"Keh! Real gentleman! Who stayed with you all night to protect you from monsters, human bitch?!" Inuyasha snapped indignantly. Credit where credit was due!

The whole table went dead silent. Someone dropped a bean on the floor.

* * *

"Yay! We're going to the mountains!" Kagome said for what must have been the hundredth time that day. She knew it was annoying, and that was exactly why she was doing it.

Since there was only limited space in Inuyasha's vehicle, and because Kagome needed to stay hidden, she was laying down on the floor of the back row of seats---crunched up against extra suitcases, Miroku's stinky feet, and often getting a face-full of Shippou's bottlebrush tail as he twisted in his seatbelt to look out the rear window.

Not only was she uncomfortable, but the group had been traveling for _hours_, so she was bored as well.

"Can we listen to music?" Kagome piped up, noticing that Sango, in the front passenger seat, had long ago zoned everyone out by clipping on a Discman.

"Haven't got a stereo," Inuyasha answered, sighing at a red light. He looked around each direction and ran the light.

"Alright. I can be the music," Kagome offered. "When a maaaaaaaaan loves a woooomannnn! The results are catastrophic---"

"No! No, no music is fine," Miroku insisted.

"Deep down in his soul! The results are---"

"Stop! For the love of all things _holy!_"

"Now I'm just offended," Kagome grunted from the floor.

"Why can't you be like normal girls and give us the cold shoulder when you're offended?" Inuyasha asked from the front seat, honking at someone and making a silly face out the window.

"Because that would be playing right into your hands!" Kagome answered. "Besides, I am full of wise words that need to be communicated to the world."

"I'm sure," Inuyasha said.

"Alright, let's play a game," Kagome suggested. "Okay, I'll go first. I spy...something mottled tan with splotches of yellow, brown, and a hot pink streak from Lord knows what."

"The car floor!" Shippou yelled.

"Correct!" Kagome answered. "Your turn."

"I spy something stupid," Shippou giggled.

"Inuyasha?"

"Correct!" Shippou congratulated.

"What the fuck is wrong with you two?!" Inuyasha yelled from the front seat. "Don't make me throw you out of the fucking car."

"I spy something grumpy," Kagome said with no less fervor.

"Inuyasha!" Shippou guessed. Not that there was much to guess.

"You are the winner!"

"Alright, enough of this fucking game!" Inuyasha mumbled as he made what surely should have been an illegal move, sending Shippou smashing into the window with a crunch and Kagome lurching into someone's suitcase. Who gave this man a license?

"I spy something silver," Shippou said.

"The back of Inuyasha's head?"

"Correct!" Shippou congratulated.

"Would you leave me the hell alone?!" Inuyasha roared from the front seat. Shippou smirked down at Kagome, who grinned up at him winningly. Ah, how fun it was to get Inuyasha's dander up.

"Let's make a story together," Kagome implored. "I'll start. Once upon a time, an innocent girl was swept into a man-eating well and sent into a world of ruthless demons, including one who pretended to do her a favor but really just hated her. Your turn."

"She was saved by the brave fox demon, who didn't care about society and just wanted to help his new friend! Together, they went on brave adventures."

"They camped out in the wilderness around a billowing campfire, were the best cattle rustlers in the wild wild west, and doubled as the most lawful county sheriffs."

"But even though they were fearless and strong, peace was not to be had!" Shippou explained with a flourish. "On the way to the bar, tragedy struck! In the middle of the road, they were stopped!"

"By a treacherous cow who was leading a mutiny. The cows were tired of walking in the hot sun and only wanted proper pampering." Miroku opened his mouth to say something, but thought better of it. He shook his head and looked out the window again.

"So, since they couldn't go around the band of angry bovines, the two friends bought toothbrushes, fine leather shoes, and all-expenses-paid coupons to Jakotsu's Spa for all the cows."

"And then the two heroes rode off into the sunset and lived happily ever after at a tropical island, spending their days swimming, wearing coconut bras, and putting fish down the swimming trunks of unsuspecting tourists." Kagome thought this part sounded particularly fun. She'd always wanted a coconut bra.

"The end!" Shippou exclaimed, wanting to get the last word in. Kagome nodded in agreement.

And then the sound of sirens spiked up.

"Ahh, fuck," Inuyasha swore, glancing out the rearview mirror at the law enforcer's car. "Cover Ka-Kagome with the suitcases, will you?"

And then Kagome was buried alive underneath the suitcases as Inuyasha resignedly pulled over and rolled the window down. He might have attempted a high-speed chase, but he recognized this particular squad car and decided it would be best for his health to just take a ticket. When Shippou noticed they were pulling over, he squeaked, undid his seatbelt, and dove underneath the seats entirely.

"Can we help you, lovely lady? I can help you out with that belt, if you like," Miroku offered suggestively, waggling his eyebrows, as the police woman came to the window. She turned a very burning, dangerous glare at the demon, but Miroku seemed oblivious. He drooled.

"Miroku, shut the fuck up, you're making things worse. Do I got a ticket or not, bitch?"

"I'm sure that's making matters better, my friend..."

"You men are _morons!_" Sango said, tossing her Discman into her lap and turning to the police woman, wanting to let this woman know that at least one single person in the car was sane.

"Alright, Mister," the police woman said to Inuyasha, although she made sure Sango could hear. "You are speeding by 20 MPH, you are passing in a no passing zone, you have a broken light, your muffler is bent, you ran over one traffic sign, and one of your plate numbers is painted over."

"Ahh...I can explain!" Inuyasha defended.

"Whether or not you can does not matter. You are in big trouble. Please step out of the vehicle."

Inuyasha grumbled and sidled out of his car, glaring at Sango because she was the closest to him. When the doors were closed and Inuyasha had been escorted away, Sango turned to the back seat.

"Dump one of those suitcases and get Kagome in it," she hissed. "They're going to take his car."

"Tow his car? Why?" Miroku asked, unzipping one of the suitcases and letting clothes fall out. He ordered Kagome to get in, which she warily did. He zipped up the suitcase, leaving a small hole at the top. Kagome grumbled from within. Miroku began shoving the fallen clothing into another suitcase.

"This is the third time this month he's been pulled over for the light and the plate number," Sango explained, exhaling.

"Yeah, well...I know that."

"Yes, I know you know, because you are the reason _I_ know. They tow after third violation. I'll have to call a rented car and drive."

"They take it away right now?" Miroku asked, bewildered.

"They usually don't, but they can if they want to, and I wouldn't put it past them," Sango said, waving towards Inuyasha. "Look at him."

Miroku spun around and watched as Inuyasha ranted and raged and the police woman looked ready to smack him. Hard.

"Hwf log do Ah gawa sway 'n ere?" Kagome complained from the suitcase. "I canf bweathe."

"You can breathe just fine, now please be quiet," Miroku said.

Just moments later, Inuyasha came back to the car, looking bedraggled and worried, and leaned into the car through the window. "Guys, everyone out. They're taking my car away for a month."

"Alright. You grab the heavy suitcase then, will you?" Miroku said with a wink.

Inuyasha gave Miroku a look, but opened the back door and grabbed the one Miroku indicated. "Oof!" he said and dropped it to the street. "Fuck, what the hell did you pack?" he grumbled, massaging his pulled shoulder and picking up the bag again. On the inside of the bag, Kagome was trying her hardest not to yell out in pain and anger. Shippou peeked out from underneath the seat, dashed out of the car, and dove into the bag Miroku was carrying.

Inuyasha dragged the Kagome-suitcase over to the side of the road, where he dropped it. Sango and Miroku both winced as it thumped and flopped over, but set their bags down beside it without saying anything. One of the police women took control of Inuyasha's car, and they called a rental for Sango's use after examining her license. Then they left the group by the side of the road to wait for the company to bring the rental.

"That was so not cool. Where's Ka-Kagome?" Inuyasha asked.

"In the bag," Sango said, coughing lightly and pointing to the bag Inuyasha had dropped. He paled.

"Oops..."

Kagome was already planning revenge.

* * *

Comments: Thanks for the support, and the e-mails! ;)

Ahaha, sorry, **Xaenthe**!! Thank you!

**midnightmood**, the chapters aren't _too_ long, are they? I can make the coming ones shorter. I just usually make them all the same length as my first chapter, and since I got carried away and ended up making it around fifteen pages...Thank you!

Next chapter: The Hills Are Alive! A trip to the mountains, cont., enter Kouga and Ayame, and what to do when you run out of toothpaste in the wild!


	4. Chapter 04: The Hills Are Alive

DEMONS, INC.

Chapter 04: The Hills Are Alive

* * *

"AHHH! MY FUCKING MOUTH!" Inuyasha screamed from the bathroom. His voice reverberated throughout the entire cabin, and even out into the woods, where it scared off some of the little woodland critters. Meanwhile, Kagome and Shippou were safely stowed beneath the patchy chair in the living room, where they had been hiding since Inuyasha announced his claim on the bathroom.

"Maybe this wasn't a good idea," Shippou whispered nervously over Inuyasha's howls of pain.

"Are you kidding?" Kagome hissed back. "I've been waiting all day for this moment!"

Shippou looked at her dubiously as the bathroom door flew open with a powerful _BAM!_ and Inuyasha stormed out, hunched over and looking angry, mouth dripping with foamy toothpaste. His fangs gleamed dangerously among the puffs of cloudy paste. Shippou bit back a whimper.

"That's it! Where the hell are you two?! Get the fuck out here!"

"Inuyasha?" Miroku said uneasily as he came out of the kitchen. "My word, you're rabid!"

"I am not fucking RABID!" Inuyasha growled. "Those two fucking retards---"

"It's rude to call people retards, Inuyasha," Miroku chided.

"I don't fucking care! Those two _retards_ put tabasco sauce on my TOOTHBRUSH!"

"It's not tabasco sauce," Kagome whispered to Shippou. "It's Fyro Diablo, the only hot sauce with 1,500,000 SHUs."

"I know," Shippou agreed.

"Go rinse your mouth out," Sango ordered as she came out of her bedroom, looking agitated as Inuyasha's foam dripped onto the floor. Inuyasha roared once more and then retreated to the bathroom, slamming the door shut. The water turned on and the sounds of Inuyasha gurgling and gagging melodramatically could be heard. Sango went back to the bedroom, rolling her eyes, and Miroku returned to the kitchen. Kagome and Shippou stayed safely under the chair.

"We're dead meat," Shippou whimpered.

"Shush," Kagome said and then ordered, "Follow me."

Kagome crawled out from underneath the chair with Shippou close behind her. They crept into the kitchen, where Miroku was 'reading' a naughty magazine, which surprised neither of them. He looked fairly absorbed in what he was doing, so Kagome and Shippou continued on. Kagome stopped at the refrigerator and quietly opened the door. From inside, she pulled out a bottle of whipped cream and a can of tube cheese, which Sango had bought from the grocery store earlier that day at Inuyasha's insistence. Then they left the kitchen and retreated to the relative safety underneath the chair, where Kagome pulled off Shippou's socks, despite his quiet protesting. She stuffed the whipped cream in one and tucked it into his jeans' belt loop. Then she stuffed the tube cheese in the other and fastened it to her own belt loop.

"We are now armed and dangerous," Kagome whispered. "Now the time has come, my friend."

The two stealthily slid out the front door. Kagome peeked around both ways before darting into the surrounding wood, Shippou close behind her. In the cabin, they could hear Inuyasha resume his thumping around the house, looking for the pair of trouble-makers.

"We'll have to stake out in the woods until he calms down some," Kagome explained quietly. "When he cools off, we'll move on to phase two."

"If you say so, Kagome," Shippou agreed wearily. Now he knew why people got tired of playing with _him_ so quickly---doing such things required so much energy, and Kagome's energy was intense! Like a man in his midlife crisis pursuing a sports car, Kagome was unstoppable.

Shippou trotted after Kagome as she pulled branches into a box-shape around the rise of a gully. He helped her for awhile, and then followed her example by dragging fallen leaves inside when she completed a shaky roof.

"Here's Fort Alonso," Kagome announced proudly, crawling into the ditch. "We wait here."

Shippou sighed and followed.

* * *

Shippou and Kagome, unfortunately, were forced to stay the entire night at Fort Alonso, because they fell asleep long before Inuyasha was done being angry (he was very sensitive to hot foods, but neither Kagome nor Shippou had known as such---if so, they might have saved it to be phase three rather than phase one).

In the morning, it so happened that they awoke to the sound of snarling and a rusty, dripping sound. Shippou was the first to rise.

After he remembered where he was, Shippou peeked out of the fort to find the source of the odd noises. Just outside Fort Alonso was a demonic wild cat, teeth gleaming in the early morning sunlight as it nosed around the sticks comprising the wall of the fort.

"AHHHH!" Shippou screamed. "KAGOME!"

"Wha-I'm-trying-to-shleep-go-eat-my-polka-dot-shorts," Kagome mumbled in one breath, burying her face into a patch of crinkled leaves and snorting once.

"KAGOME! We're going to die!" Shippou notified.

"_Inuyasha!_" Kagome hissed and snapped upward, assuming that they had been caught. She bumped her head on the ceiling of Fort Alonso, causing the entire conglomeration of stick and leaf to come crashing down on her and her companion. Meanwhile, their pursuer growled happily and bounced at the fallen sticks, flicking its tail playfully.

"AHH!" Shippou repeated. Kagome joined him.

"Let's get out of here!" Kagome yelled. She threw a stick into the trees, which caught the cat's attention momentarily, and then she darted off toward the cabin with Shippou in her arms. The cat, angered, pounced and trotted after them, all the while with a scratchy growl in its throat. Kagome whimpered. "Oh man oh man oh man!"

"KA-GO-MAYYY!" Shippou howled as he peeked over her shoulder. "It's getting closer!"

Kagome tripped just as the cat took a flying leap at them, and it sailed clean over where Kagome had fallen. Shippou and Kagome chorused a scream and resumed running as the cat got on the rebound.

"Where's a conch shell when you need one?!" Kagome yelped, imagining calling a militia to her aid with the ancient shell.

"Where's Inuyasha when you need him?!" Shippou corrected. "We're going to die, Kagome!"

"Curse Fort Alonso!" Kagome screeched and veered off the path. "Shippou, get into that tree!"

Shippou did as ordered, springing from Kagome's shoulder into the tree branches. As Kagome had planned, the cat continued to follow her, only sending a small glance toward the fox boy shivering in the branches. She was both bigger and more accessible.

The cat cornered Kagome off, forcing her to run in another direction.

Kagome reached down into her sock holster and pulled out the tube cheese that she had put there. In an all-or-nothing moment of heated heroics, she gave a ferocious war cry and squirted the cat in the eyes. It roared, backing up and spinning as it tried to get the runny cheese out of its eyes. Kagome took her chance and darted toward the cabin, Shippou jumping down to land in her arms again.

The cat yowled, now done playing, and sprung after them just as they managed to reach the cabin. They tore open the door and flew inside, collapsing into the chairs around the television and panting.

Outside, the gray morning began to turn pink with sun, and the cat crackled and hissed at the door.

Shippou started to cry.

"What's wrong, Shippou?" Kagome panted, coughing a little.

"We nearly died!" he wailed melodramatically.

"We're fine," Kagome insisted, suddenly feeling guilty. "I'm sorry, Shippou."

"It's Inuyasha's fault!" he screamed.

"WHAT is my fault?!" Inuyasha demanded groggily as he came out of his bedroom.

"I want to go to Brickbreaker and rent video games!" Shippou wailed.

"What the fuck is your problem?! The sun ain't even up yet! Why the hell are you awake?"

"It happened like this!" Shippou crowed. "We were staying in Fort Alonso when we were attacked by a demon! It's still outside!" Shippou finished on a whimper.

"Why the fuck did you two stay outside?!"

"Because," Kagome said, folding her arms over her chest and sticking her chin in the air, "we_ felt _like it." She wasn't about to remind him of the toothpaste incident last night.

The cat rumbled at the door. Inuyasha threw open the door and let loose a mighty war cry, and the beast tromped away, hissing in anger and fear. Inuyasha slammed the door again and turned to Kagome and Shippou, who were now clinging to each other pitifully.

"Wimps."

"Can we go to Brickbreaker now?" Shippou whined. "I'm bored."

* * *

Shippou did indeed get permission to go to Brickbreaker, but Kagome was supposedly forced to wait behind because of her "human stench." Luckily, she had already decided Inuyasha would try to keep her behind, and hid in the trunk of Sango's rental car, dressed in her stolen, demon-smelling clothes.

She met Shippou inside of the rental facility as Sango went off to look at the movies of her tastes---sappy romances and brutal action-adventure movies.

"Shippou," Kagome whispered as she ducked into an aisle of foreign films. "Psst."

"Kagome!" Shippou hissed happily and crouched down next to her. "Let's pick out a movie."

"Aye, aye!" Kagome agreed. They crawled amongst the aisles, gathering attention from all loiterers, until they came to the Popular Hits section. While waiting there, Kagome suddenly noticed a set of stairs. She poked Shippou's shoulder and pointed. "What's up there?" she asked.

"Ohhh..." Shippou whispered. "Secret stairway! Let's go!"

"Just what I was thinking!" Kagome said, and then began to slink off toward the shadily lit stairway. Creeping stealthily, Kagome and Shippou made it up the flight of stairs without incident. The overhead light, dim and half-out, buzzed and flickered. Metallic shelf upon metallic shelf gleamed dully.

"Wow..." Shippou murmured in awe. "We've entered Wonderland!"

Kagome sprung up from the ground and went forth into one of the aisles.

"No we haven't," Kagome said, horrified as she dropped the DVD she had pulled out from the shelf. "This aisle is filled with _porn!"_

A man behind a desk, who hadn't noticed them before, looked up suddenly at the sound of Kagome's noise. Shippou was running around in a crazy circle, hyperventilating.

"Hey," the man barked. "Kids aren't allowed up here."

"I'm not a kid," Kagome said with dignity. "I am an adult."

"Well, _that _one is a kid. I doubt there's anything you'd like up here anyway, so go back downstairs where you belong."

"Fine!" Kagome agreed. "This place isn't any fun, anyhow."

Kagome walked down the stairs elegantly, like a princess, and Shippou bounced onto her shoulder to follow.

"Alright," Kagome told Shippou. "We'd better not have an adventure here. Go pick out a movie, Sango's looking agitated. I'm going to go hide in the car."

"'Kay," Shippou agreed and scampered off to where Sango was in the Action-Adventure aisle. Kagome went back to the car and wiggled into the trunk in order to wait for the demons. Before long, Sango and Shippou exited the building and piled into the car and took off for the cabin again, which was a good half an hour away. Once back, Sango left Shippou to his own devices and disappeared. She was a very solitary demon, and Kagome was glad.

Kagome crawled out of the trunk and followed Shippou into the cabin. A war ensued.

"It is OUR turn with the television," Shippou told Inuyasha poutily.

"No," Inuyasha insisted. "I'm watching a game."

"You've had it all fucking day long!" Shippou pointed out.

"Don't you fucking use that kind of language, nitwit!" Inuyasha told Shippou seriously.

"You say it all the time!" Shippou argued. Kagome was sitting this one out, looking on with interest.

"I'm a fucking adult, retard!" Inuyasha snapped.

"SO-FUCKING-WHAT?!" Shippou yelled at the top of his lungs. Miroku popped into the living room and stared at Shippou with an appalled look on his face.

"Shippou, if you keep talking like that, we'll have to wash your mouth out with soap."

"So what!" Shippou yelled. "I bet you two don't even own a bar of soap!"

"Hey! Are you insulting our personal hygiene?!" Inuyasha yelped.

"As a matter of fact, I am!" Shippou confirmed.

"I want a puppy," added Kagome.

* * *

Kagome and Shippou had decided to take drastic measures, since Inuyasha was being relentless about the television.

It was time for phase two.

"Come in, Agent Foxfire!" Kagome whispered into her hair brush, sounding quite serious enough to make it impressive, like there was actually a sound device in the normal hair care product.

"What am I supposed to say again?" Shippou asked into his hair brush quietly, standing next to Kagome.

"Nevermind. The stealth of this mission has been shot," Kagome notified, looking into the window of the cabin and shoving her hair brush into her sock holster, next to the tube cheese.

After an evening of pestering for the television to no avail, Shippou and Kagome set to work. It was tough work that required copious amounts of stealth, care, and wit. The two partners took up their arms of whipped cream and Cheezfizz, utilized hair brush walkie talkies, and stepped through an available patch of mud to disguise their scents and cover the palest parts of their skin.

They were ready for anything. Armageddon would have turned its back and fled at the sight of them.

"Subject A coming into view," Kagome hummed quietly, narrowing her eyes as Inuyasha stepped out of the kitchen and into the living room with a scowl on his face. He turned once, spoke something to Sango who was in the kitchen reading, and then went back into the living room. Shippou and Kagome swooped into a crouch as he padded by them, plopping down in front of the television. "Alright, Agent," Kagome whispered. "You take watch, I'll set the plan into motion. Wait for my signal in case I get caught, will you?"

"Aye, aye," Shippou said and nodded once in affirmation. Kagome saluted him, and took off at a stooped jog around the edge of the house. The crickets chirped lazily in the early night, the trees whimpered and whistled against each other in the comfortable breeze, and the sound of distant water could be heard. A perfect night for secret agent business.

Kagome paused at the side of the house, listening for anything. Then she turned to the cabin.

The cabin was built on a slope, so that as one went around the single-story building the roof nearly touched the ground. If one was nimble, one could easily leap up there.

That was Kagome's destination.

With care, she sprung, catlike, onto the roof and crawled to the skylight. Carefully, she wiggled it open to its propped position and peeked down into the bedroom. Miroku was sleeping on one of the two Twin-size beds, and the sounds of the television were distant. Kagome withdrew her face and peeked over the other side of the roof, smiling down to Shippou, who waved her on.

Kagome patted the tube cheese in her sock holster and then wedged herself into the cracked window to her stomach. She bent her body and curved down into the room, and all was well until she got stuck.

_Thunk-thunk_. Nope, her torso was just barely too wide to fit through. And now she was stuck.

"Ahh...ah, Shippou!" she called in a fierce whisper. "Help!"

Shippou misinterpreted the message and began causing a ruckus, which was what he was supposed to do if Kagome got caught. He burst through the front door of the cabin.

"THE HILLS ARE ALIVE WITH THE NOISE OF MUSIC!" Shippou wailed melodramatically and very off key. In the living room, Inuyasha stared at him with an expressionless face.

"What the fuck are you doing?" he grunted. "Hills aren't alive, you dumb ass."

"Come look at my sand castle!" Shippou demanded, jumping in circles and going into the kitchen, trying to get Sango's attention.

Meanwhile, Kagome was trying to scramble out of the window. She stayed stuck, which was not only unfortunate, but very bad.

"SOMEBODY HELP ME!" she cried. "DEATH BY WINDOW!"

Below her frantically kicking legs, Miroku somehow slept soundly. Shippou could be heard singing about daffodils in spring and a bicycle built for five-legged creatures in the other room.

Finally, after squirming for a length of time, Kagome managed to pull herself out the skylight. She panted for a moment and then straightened herself out. She smoothed down her hair and adjusted her tee-shirt (which was starting to get incredibly smelly and dirty). Clearing her throat, she said to herself, "Let's skip phase two dash two for now."

She paused, looking off in the trees surrounding the cabin. They were shivering strangely, like an ocean wave was running through them. Every so often, a strange thump like a chair falling over could be heard. She leapt down from the roof and carefully went around into the trees. Tentatively, she crawled up into one of the trees and looked on. The strange shockwave ran through the trees again and shook her. She clung to the pine branch for her life.

The rustling stopped. Everything was still and unnaturally quiet. Kagome, nestled against a bedding of pine needles, felt like an intruder.

And then the wave went again, stronger than ever, and sent Kagome flying out of the tree. She screamed and ran back to the cabin. She flew in through the door. Shippou was running in circles around the room banging two pot lids together, Sango was waving a paperback in the air and threatening to smack him with it, and Inuyasha was howling for everyone to shut up. Miroku was still not awake.

Outside, she heard the trees rustle in a powerful wave again. She slammed the door shut, grabbed Shippou while screaming, and flung herself and Shippou underneath Inuyasha's chair. The pot lids clattered to the floor and Shippou looked dazed.

"It's those monsters again!" Kagome whimpered to herself.

"There aren't any _monsters_," Inuyasha moaned, looking warily down at the chair's feet. "What the fuck are you two doing_ now?_"

"I was attacked!" Kagome insisted in a harsh hiss. Inuyasha thumped to the ground with a heavy sigh and peeked under the chair, feeling as if he was coaxing out a frightened puppy. Sango, meanwhile, rolled her eyes and went back to the kitchen.

"Attacked by _what?_" he asked with boredom and no concern.

"I-I don't know!" Kagome said, hugging the still Shippou tighter to her. "I was up in a tree over there---" she said, pointing wildly, "watching! The trees kept shaking and stuff kept thumping, but not from the wind. It really gave me the heebie jeebies, but I stayed and watched! And then my tree did it, too! It's monsters, I tell you!"

"You two are _insane_," Inuyasha notified. "Now get the hell out from underneath my damn chair and do something normal demons do."

"I'm staying _right here _until those monsters are gone."

"Saaango!" Inuyasha called.

"What now?!"

"Will you come tell these fucking morons there's no such thing as monsters!"

Sango stormed out of the kitchen. Miroku finally came out of the bedroom, blinking sleepily. Sango whacked Inuyasha on the back of the head, whacked Miroku on the back of the head, and then dropped down to the floor next to Inuyasha, peering underneath the chair.

"What are you two doing under there?"

"I was attacked! There're monsters!"

"Kagome, there's no such thing as monsters," Sango consoled.

"Then it was a ghost!" Kagome crowed, curling around Shippou even tighter.

"Can't...breathe..." Shippou whimpered.

"Sorry, Shippou," Kagome said with a sheepish grin, releasing the small fox demon and giving him a fond pat on the head.

"Just come out from under there!" Inuyasha growled at the pair.

The lights flickered and went out, along with the television.

Shippou whimpered and climbed back into Kagome's arms.

"Oopsie..." Kagome murmured.

"...'Oopsie?'" Sango repeated.

"I...uh...I set up the lights to do that..." Kagome said, chewing on her lip nervously.

"Why the fuck did you do that?!"

"No reason, exactly..." Kagome lied. Inuyasha howled and Sango loosed a heavy sigh. Miroku plopped down on the floor and exhaled.

"And when are they going back on?"

"We have to turn 'em on manually," Kagome explained. A small bubble of pride went up to her heart. Her trap had worked marvelously and now she had three demons' very rapt attention. "The trap I set only works one way."

"So go turn 'em back on!" Inuyasha barked.

"Are you crazy?! No way will I go back outside!"

"Get out there and turn the fucking lights on before _I wring your scrawny neck!_"

"Eep!" Kagome shot out from underneath the chair and dashed for the doorway. She fished around in her holster and pulled out the tube cheese, nervously licking her lips as she closed the front door behind herself. Her breath came raggedly as she listened for any strange noises from the forest. When she heard nothing, she tip-toed around the side of the house and went into a slightly adjoining shed. She left the door open, so that the weak moonlight pouring in gave enough light to make out the switches. On the floor was an intricate mess of string (she had gotten it by unraveling one of Inuyasha's shirts), squares of magazine paper (compliments of Miroku's naughty reading habits), acorns, a kitchen timer, several branches, and packaging tape. The remnants of her ingenious plan.

She stuffed her tube cheese away and turned on the switches in the control panel. She was rewarded with a gentle humming. She pulled off the remaining bits of string and gathered the supplies she had used in her plan, which she stuffed into the stretched-out sock holster. She exited the building carefully, comforted by the light streaming out of the windows.

Her comfort was short-lived as she was thrown backwards, barely missing the power switches, against the wall by a growling woman.

"Who the fuck are you?!" the woman demanded, seething and spitting and looking quite lethal. Kagome saw everything in double-vision as her head rung painfully.

"No one!" Kagome squeaked. It obviously wasn't the correct answer.

The woman growled lower and deeper, tightening her grip around Kagome's neck. "You dirty, sneaking bitch..." the woman said in a low voice.

"I didn't do anything!" Kagome panicked, picking at the woman's strong, bony fingers.

The woman snorted.

"What's going on in here?" a masculine voice asked with concern.

"Look at this," the woman ordered. The man came over and stuck his tongue out in mild disgust at the writhing, weakling girl his female companion was holding.

Kagome's hands dropped from her neck. Suddenly remembering her protective precautions, Kagome plunged a hand into her sock-holster and pulled out the bottle of tube cheese. She sprayed the woman's face, which caused her to loosen her grip and yip. Kagome sprinted out of the shed, followed by the two lunatic demons, as she hurtled herself back into the cabin and directly back underneath Inuyasha's chair.

"Wondering...where...you... went..." Inuyasha distractedly told her as he noticed the two demons standing in the door way---one wiping soft, yellow, clumping cheese away from her face and the other snarling.

"Ayame? Kouga?" Sango questioned. "I thought you two weren't getting here until day after tomorrow?"

"They attacked me!" Kagome squeaked from underneath the chair. Shippou had rejoined her, clinging to her and his tail shivering.

"Is that the human?" Ayame asked, pointing underneath the chair.

"Unfortunately..." Inuyasha murmured.

"What happened?" Miroku voiced.

"We had to come early," Kouga said. "Hey, come out from under there!" he added, directing the order at Kagome.

"Leave her the fuck alone," Inuyasha snarled. "She can stay under there if she wants to. Why did you have to come early?"

"Are they going to kill me or not?" Kagome asked from under the chair, sounding rather miffed and annoyed.

"No, they're harmless weaklings," Inuyasha explained. Kouga held up a fist while Ayame scolded Inuyasha. Kagome sighed heavily and crawled out from under her chair.

"You know," she said importantly, "your woods are haunted. The trees move on their own."

Kouga and Ayame began to laugh loudly.

"Are you talking about just now?" Ayame asked, rubbing the remaining cheese out of her eyes.

"Yes," Kagome said suspiciously, narrowing her eyes.

"That was us," Kouga said, "we move in whirlwinds."

"Enough of this!" Sango interrupted. "Let's do this the right way. Kagome, Ayame and Kouga. Ayame and Kouga, Kagome."

"I'll make sandwiches and coffee," Miroku offered and went into the kitchen. Inuyasha was broodingly watching the television again. Shippou was retrieving his pot lids and putting them away with resignation (he really enjoyed his Noise of Music performance). Sango sat down on the armrest furthest from Miroku and watched. Kagome dusted herself off with dignity and leaned against Inuyasha's chair, legs thrown out in front of her.

"Well," Kouga said. "How are you, Sango?"

"I'm just lovely," Sango said politely. "And how are you two?"

"We're doing wonderfully," Ayame told her.

"Enough with this bull shit," Inuyasha grumbled. "Why the fuck are you here early?"

"Tell you later," Ayame promised, nervously glancing at Kagome, who was fingering her tube cheese bottle with a serious, thoughtful expression. Shippou bounded back into the room and took a seat on Kagome's shoulder. She whispered something in his ear. They nodded to each other and then pretended to watch television.

"Scram," Inuyasha told them. "You two, go get lost."

"No," Shippou disagreed.

"We're watching television."

"Can we watch our movie now?" Shippou whined.

"Only if you get lost for awhile," Inuyasha reasoned. The two nodded and sprinted off for the bedroom. They closed the door behind them loudly, and then quietly teased it back open. In the living room, Miroku was called back in.

"We have some bad news," Kouga said to the group.

"Here," Ayame said, pulling out a video tape from her handbag. She put it into the VCR and set to tuning it, which took awhile.

Meanwhile, Kagome had Shippou stand guard while she padded into the bathroom. With a quiet chuckle, she stole all the tubes of toothpaste. Looking around for an appropriate hiding place, she decided to stuff them inside of Inuyasha's pillow case. His hair needed some minty freshness.

Kagome went back to Shippou, dusting her hands off proudly. In the other room, the television was finally cooperating with Ayame, which was a blessing in itself. Everyone knows televisions are temperamental and only show the programs they personally like.

A fuzzy newscast came on, although Kagome and Shippou could only hear the static. "They've been displaying this all over," Ayame warned.

Inuyasha squinted at it. A photograph of a woman with black hair and dark eyes came on the screen. "It's Ka-Kagome!" he hissed.

_"In other news, there has been word of a human's escape into the demon world. If you see this human, call the number below. Please remember that humans are dangerous creatures and you should not approach it directly. Call authorities immediately. The following rewards are being offered for your assistance."_

"Oh, fuck," Inuyasha said and slumped into his chair.

"They know Kagome's here..." Miroku mumbled. "We're going to be executed."

In the bedroom, Shippou and Kagome exchanged glances.

"Darn," Kagome whispered. "I guess this means my evil scheme must be post-poned."

* * *

Comments: I had a lot of trouble with this chapter. I just couldn't get in the mood for it. Hopefully next chapter will be better.

**Lake of Fire**, yep, Kagome is totally OOC, while the rest of the characters are extremely overdone version of their stereotypical fanfic selves. Unfortunately, this is the only way I can do humor. :P I'm glad you approve!

**valene**, thanks so much! Like I said, this is the only way I can do humor! Oh yes, about Inuyasha's Ka-Kagome...well, this is from an earlier chapter---"Inuyasha just wouldn't get her name right, even after she had corrected him several times. He always insisted on putting the extra Ka in front. She was not sure if he was mocking her or if he was just stupid."

**Sailor-Helios**, your comments really mean a lot to me. They give me a lot of inspiration, and it really makes me so happy that you're asking questions, even if I can't answer them for risk of spoiler ;D. And yes! There will be a plot. Probably a generic, stereotypical one, but it'll be there!

**Moonglow gal**, sorry hah. My sense of humor overtakes me. :3

**kikyo_must_die**, haha, yep, life would be a blast if it could always be this way! A lot of these scenes are taken from my daily life...just not the exciting ones. Thanks a whole lot!

**inu-ears**, you'll just have to wait and see! -wink, wink-

**Angel_4_life**, thank you tremendously! You have no idea how much your comments mean to me!

To everyone else I did not answer, I'm terribly sorry. All your reviews are cherished, adored, and loved! Thanks everyone, so much!


	5. Chapter 05: I Know Where You Sleep

DEMONS, INC.

Chapter 05: I Know Where You Sleep at Night

* * *

"So then the space-age swans shot laser beams out of their raygun sunglasses and destroyed the ancient palace and had mint julep in celebration," Kagome said, using her old walkie-talkie brush to work out a stubborn knot in her hair, now that it had retired to being a normal hair brush again. Inuyasha, sitting propped up against the pillows on the bed, peeked up from his magazine (about sports) to give Kagome a look of disbelief. Kagome yawned and took no note, her back facing him as she sat with folded legs on the foot of the bed.

"Space-age...swans?"

"Yep," Kagome replied, not gracing it with a further explanation. How much more could Inuyasha need?

"And when was this?"

"The space age, duh," Kagome replied.

"I'd blame this on TV..."

"But you never let me watch TV," Kagome argued. "You're like my mom. 'No, Kagome, you can't stay up late, you keep everyone else up,' and 'no, Kagome, you watch too much television, why don't you read a good book?'"

"I am not like _anyone's_ mother," Inuyasha insisted with an injured look.

"Well, I suppose you are a _bit _more masculine, and most mothers don't swear nearly as much as you do."

"Just shut the fuck up and get lost."

"Did I tell you about the time that..."

* * *

Kagome, being the human that no one wanted to share a bed or room with, was made to sleep on the sofa that night while the rest of the group found solace elsewhere. Kouga and Miroku each took a Twin-size bed in one of rooms, while Sango and Ayame took the Double-sized one in the second room. Inuyasha slept on a pallet made on the floor in the girls' room in order to keep separated from Kouga. They fought like maniacs, and no one wanted to be kept up all night long by their fighting; especially when their fighting was usually about something ridiculous...like what color the sky was. (Kagome remembered that fight clearly---Kouga claiming the sky a pearly beryl, Inuyasha insisting faded azure. Then she just had to butt in and remind them the sun was setting, and the sky was not blue any longer at all.)

With no space in the girls' bedroom left and Kagome unwilling to share a room with two men (which was understandable)---and with no one wanting to share a bed anyhow---she took the sofa, with Shippou sleeping on Sango and Ayame's bed where he could actually have a pillow. He was still a bit worn out from their previous camping trip at Fort Alonso.

All the blankets had been taken by the rest of the group, which didn't really bother Kagome too much because the cabin was very warm with so many people packed inside of it...not to mention there was no air conditioner and it was still midsummer in the demon realm. As a matter of fact, she thought everything felt rather nice. The breeze from the window was cool and gentle and she was grateful to have the place of least noise in which to sleep.

The night went soundly for a great many hours until a horrible tragedy struck, terrible by unfathomable depths.

Miroku was thirsty.

And that was all there was to it. So he stumbled out of bed, grumbling, and lethargically pulled himself down the hallway like a dying caterpillar...or a sack of potatoes with its own will to live. He stopped halfway through the living room, however, when he noticed Kagome sleeping, her face buried into the side of the sofa. Sleepily, he observed her. She was wearing someone's Demons, Inc. polo work shirt as a replacement for pajamas, which left her long legs exposed, feet (one bare and the other with a hole-ridden sock) crunched against the armrest. But mostly it was the exposed legs that got his attention. Before Miroku could cognitively realize his actions, he began creeping forward, like a hyena on a wounded animal. He came close to Kagome, hearing her mumble something indistinct (although it sounded suspiciously like something about eggs and helicopters) as she slept. And his hand, the one that got him into trouble with Sango time after time, flashed out from his side and grabbed Kagome's rearend.

The results were as instant as fireworks. And as explosive. And probably as colorful.

"Holy mother of pearl!" Kagome screamed as she woke up, scrambling over the top of the sofa, which tipped and fell over as she tumbled off of it. "What the tiddledywinks is going on?!"

Miroku, meanwhile, gaped at his hand in utter horror.

Had he...Had he just _groped a human?!_

Kagome paused for a minute, sprawled out on the floor behind the tipped sofa, before she realized Miroku standing over her with wide eyes.

Kagome had never seen Miroku grope Sango---or anyone else, for that matter---even though he did it quite frequently. But she_ did _know that Miroku went through porn like a chain-smoker through packages of cigarettes. He was practically the most advanced porn-viewer she had ever seen.

The squeeze on her posterior. Miroku in the room. She was innocent, exposed, and defenseless. And it was dark. Everyone knows what that means.

"Scandalous!" Kagome screamed at the top of her lungs when Miroku took a stumbling step forward, gripping his hand like he wanted to lob it off.

Her rump was offended.

"Sexual harassment!"

"I just..."

"Offensive sexual advance!"

"Groped..."

"Unprofessional behavior!"

"A human..."

"What the fuck is going on out here?!" Inuyasha mumbled, rubbing his stiff neck and glaring at everyone as he came out of the bedroom.

"He just grabbed my butt! While I was asleep, no less!" Kagome wailed. "I feel so violated! Torn! Hurt! Betrayed! What am I talking about again?"

Inuyasha stared at Miroku with a look of utter horror. "Why the fuck did you do that?!"

"...You make it sound like my butt is unappealing..."

"I...I just..." Miroku was still mumbling to himself in shock. By then, the sheer amount of screaming had woken everyone else up. Sango drearily wandered out of the bedroom, followed by Ayame as Kouga joined them from the other room. Shippou remained in bed, trying to ignore his new best friend's cries of utter anguish.

"What's going on?" Sango croaked sleepily.

"Miroku grabbed my butt!" Kagome clarified indignantly, scrambling up from the floor and putting her hands on her hips. Sango turned a burning glare on Miroku. She slapped him. A burst of flame emitted from her palm like magic, and a long scorch mark appeared on Miroku's face. A few of his hairs flickered like lit candle wicks.

"Idiot!" Inuyasha roared at Miroku.

Miroku nodded in agreement and went back to bed with his hair still smoking, not even getting himself a drink.

And that was how Inuyasha wound up sleeping on the sofa instead.

* * *

Kagome took in a deep breath, filling her lungs with the fresh mountain air. Her body puffed out like a balloon and she pulled her head back, tipping her face upward toward the blue sky. Inuyasha's expression turned into a look of pure horror as she slowly opened her mouth wider. Shippou stuck himself in an available hole.

_"Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"_ Kagome screamed with all that air, just like in the movies. With her hands gripped into fists and her knees bent, she looked truly tragic. She had mastered this technique long ago. This meant war. "That means we'll be going even further away! And I don't want to cut my luxurious, lovely hair!"

"Ka-Kagome!" Inuyasha snapped. "Would you rather die?"

Kagome sighed, looking crestfallen and hopeless. "How does Ayame even know where to get fake IDs, anyhow?"

Inuyasha didn't answer.

"And how is Sango getting your car back, exactly?"

Silence. Kagome watched him intently.

"Have you been across the border illegally before?"

More silence.

"Just let me cut your damn hair!" Inuyasha finally shouted.

"Just let me cut _your _hair!"

"Pah, yeah right!" Inuyasha barked, laughing. "Like I'd ever let you touch these gorgeous locks?"

Silence.

"...Just let me cut your hair, for fuck's sake."

"Not unless you can catch me first!" Kagome cried gleefully, leaping away from the grill by which she was standing and pelting away, soaring cleanly over Shippou as if he were a mere stone in her path.

"Get back you here, you bitch!"

"Your mouth is so foul I can smell it from here!" Kagome shrieked as she grappled with a tree branch, swinging herself up into the branches and nimbly climbing into the crown like a true jungle woman. Inuyasha growled.

"Get the fuck down here, you insufferable woman!"

"Kagome, watch out!" Shippou yelped, squeaking as Inuyasha shook a threatening fist at him. He hid inside the grill. Kagome, by that time, had been given enough time to leap out of her tree, rolling through a soft patch of grass. With a yip, she dodged a swipe from Inuyasha and raced in the opposite direction.

"Don't run with scissors!" Kagome warned. "You could put an eye out!"

"I don't HAVE any scissors!" Inuyasha insisted, leaping into the air and landing in front of her. Kagome fell over backwards and Inuyasha overbalanced as he tried to grab her, tumbling to the ground as Kagome rolled forward. Kagome recovered and raced off again.

By this time, Miroku and Kouga had heard the noise and gathered outside.

"Help me grab the fucking bitch!" Inuyasha roared, swiping at Kagome again as she cleverly tripped and smacked her face against a tree. Quirking her eyebrows at the three men as if accepting a challenge for a duel to the death (which it might have been), she galloped off again. Kouga and Miroku joined in the valiant chase to pin the determined human, brandishing bits of sticks they found and giving off mighty war cries, but not daring anything more risky. They, like any normal demon, were still afraid of humans.

An overbalanced swing here, a trip there; a kick and a tackle and a leap...a few accidents with the trees...Kagome managed to defend against all offenses. Shippou watched in pure amazement from the top of the grill as Kagome dove out of grasp yet again, twirling like a ballerina he had seen on television once.

It went on for a Great Many Whiles, or rather just about fifteen minutes, before Kagome began to tire. With a last burst of energy, she pelted toward the lake. Her bare feet pounded over the course earth as she agilely leapt over tree roots and sticks. She went with as much speed as she possessed---or maybe more like she _was _possessed. She was only yards from the lake! She could feel a swipe go above her head like a dive-bombing bird. Mere inches! The cold smell of water wafted over her, gentle and hopeful. Someone landed atop her, pinning her to the rocky shore of the lake. Her outstretched fingers splashed into the water, sending droplets into the air.

_"Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"_ she cried as two more men landed on top of the pile, keeping her trapped. "I'm going to die! You men need some FastSlim or _something!"_

"Have you got her down?" Miroku, at the top of the pile, questioned as she wriggled underneath the hundreds of pounds of demon. "I'll go get a chair and some rope."

"My hair! My hair that I've grown out for years!" Kagome moaned as Inuyasha, straddling her while Kouga kept her arms pinned, gathered her long hair up into a ponytail and sliced it off with a claw. Inuyasha dropped the lifeless strands in Kagome's lap as Kouga released her and she sat up. Kagome tearfully looked down at the seven inches' worth of hair.

"We had to disguise you," Kouga said apologetically. "Your face is in every demon's newspaper, every news program."

"How is cutting my hair going to help? My face looks the same," Kagome said, crossing her arms and turning away from the two men. Miroku came back empty-handed (he had secretly gone away not to get a chair and rope...but to escape the blame. He really didn't fancy another slap on the cheek just yet---maybe later in the evening he would feel a bit braver).

"You look entirely different without hair," Kouga consoled.

"You mean...I'm bald? How could you!" Kagome crowed, clapping her hands to the side of her head. Shippou finally appeared, perching on top of a rock. He blinked stupidly for a moment.

"You cut her hair off!" Shippou yelped. "How could you!"

* * *

Kagome was more serious than she had ever been in her life. More serious than the time Houjou came wobbling up her steps those many days ago. More serious than the time she had to come up with a plausible excuse for turning in that homework assignment accidentally written in Greek (why was she the last to know she spoke Greek?). More serious than the time her pink shower curtains acquired a small rip. Well...almost that serious, anyway.

She looked at her reflection in the mirror. Her hair was very short, the majority of it just touching her chin. It was uneven. Ratty-looking. And just plain short. She leaned in closer to the mirror and drummed her fingers on the ceramic counter as she narrowed her eyes.

She straightened and looked at the mirror with a glint in her eye.

"The time has come," she whispered to her reflection. "It is time to unleash my full power."

She nodded once and then turned from the bathroom, marching into the hallway. She passed the men on the porch, who all watched her exit the cabin with a type of grace she had never before exhibited as they put some slabs of meat onto the BBQ grill.

Kagome continued on her path until she finally found Shippou chasing a butterfly.

"That lake is a very nice spot," Kagome notified Shippou in a rare voice of calm. Shippou narrowed his eyes at her. She could be up to no good...

"...And?"

"...Well, swimming's always a nice thought," Kagome said thoughtfully. "It's warm enough out..."

"I have a better thought..." Shippou suggested, smiling innocently.

"I hope you're thinking what I'm thinking," Kagome complied, grinning back at him devilishly.

* * *

"Alright, Shippou...are you ready?"

"All set!" the little fox called, paddling around in the lake, holding his tail aloft. Kagome nodded and began scaling a tree nearest to where the path met the lake, one that they had marked especially for this occasion. She grabbed onto a half-broken branch as she nestled into a low cluster of limbs. Hidden by the leaves, she peeked down at the shore of the lake, where she had a great view of the shoreline and the little fox demon bobbing around in the water.

"Go, Shippou!" she ordered.

"INUUU_YA_SHA!" Shippou yelled. "I'm being eaten by leeches! LEECHES! LEEEEECHES!" Shippou continued to call for Inuyasha as loudly and shrilly as he could, scaring nearby birds out of trees and a few rabbits from patches of weeds. It felt good to have some nice vocal cords.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Inuyasha asked in a bored voice as he finally approached the edge of the lake. He, as well as the other male demons, had been about to start eating lunch...a nice lunch of BBQ...when he had heard the kid start screaming. So he swallowed his meat whole and came to see what the kid wanted. Shippou refused to answer the question and only continued to scream about leeches, bobbing up in down in the water frantically in the center of the lake. Kagome held her breath and waited, completely concentrated and focused. She was in the _zone_. Inuyasha got a step closer to the lake.

"Inuyaaaasha!" Shippou screamed, screwing his eyes shut and wailing as loud as his tiny fox lungs would let him. Kagome was personally surprised he hadn't gotten the attention of the rest of the world while he was at it.

"If you think I'm getting in there to save your sorry ass, you're sorely mista---" he was cut off as Kagome, hanging onto her broken branch like a monkey man to a vine in a jungle movie, leapt from her tree and collided with him. Inuyasha lost his balance and bellyflopped into the lake, windmilling his arms crazily before he splashed.

"Great job, Shippou!" Kagome commended as she twirled into the lake, swimming out to the middle where the fox was laughing manically, an activity Kagome joined in. After awhile, they ceased laughing and congratulating each other when they noticed Inuyasha hadn't yet surfaced.

"...You didn't hit him _that_ hard, did you Kagome?"

"Of course not," she said with a scowl. "I've run into him before and it was no big deal. I even jumped on him from the top of the roof yesterday and it didn't seem to bother him that much. He didn't even fall over."

"Why isn't he coming back up?" Shippou asked in a small voice, climbing onto Kagome's head so that he could see the shore, where Inuyasha had disappeared from sight.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Kagome mumbled. "He's not allergic to water, is he? It would explain why he never bathes..."

"What if he can't swim?" Shippou whispered in a horrified voice. "We've killed Inuyasha!"

"...No _way!" _Kagome argued. For one thing, she didn't want the guilt on her head. For another...she had been relying on Inuyasha for the protection of her life. If he was done in by a little bit of water...well...

"We've killed Inuyashaaaa!" Shippou wailed before beginning to cry.

Inuyasha's shirt, ripped down the middle, bobbed up at the surface of the lake and washed up on the shore. Kagome and Shippou screamed in unison, horrified that the body would be following eventually...probably bloody and horribly maimed and bloated and tangled with leeches clinging to it...

A clawed hand grabbed Kagome's leg. She screamed louder and kicked manically. Shippou clung to her hair. The hand pulled Kagome into the water and Shippou jumped away as if burned, panting as he reached the edge of the lake. Wildly, he looked around...but Kagome was completely gone from sight.

A few bubbles came up where she had been. Shippou whimpered. Kagome and Inuyasha! His two favorite people in the world (after the host from Flora the Explorer)! Eaten by the lake! Shippou wailed loudly. How cruel a fate...to have a man-eating lake in the middle of a vacationing spot...he'd have to have Sango get on to someone about that. Everyone knows that man-eating lakes are horrible for business. Even in places that don't do business.

Kagome, under the water, thrashed and burbled. Something had her leg and it wasn't letting go, no matter how hard she enacted her best boogie-dancing impression. She eventually blindly struck whatever it was with her foot. She somehow felt this situation wasn't good---maybe not as bad as some of the trauma she had undergone, like her current craving for a burger, but a sea monster was pretty close. Wait! Her eyes widened in fear. "MONSTER!" she tried to scream, only blowing out a few bubbles.

Shippou nearly lost his balance when Inuyasha burst out of the water, dangling Kagome---screaming about monsters---upside down by the ankle. Inuyasha smirked, even though a bruise was developing on his cheek...Kagome had probably kicked him in the face, Shippou reasoned. She really was giving it her all. Even now, she was yelling about sea monsters eating people and when the people were gone no one would be there to fix the juice spill she had made on her mother's favorite bed spread and then she'd be grounded for life because she hadn't told anyone before she left for an escapade in a demon world, but wait, she was being eaten by a monster so it didn't matter anyhow except that the karma would probably follow her into the afterlife and she'd probably have to be the janitor at a juvenile delinquent center in her next life...

Kagome, spinning as she thrashed to get away, caught sight of who held her. Her screaming stopped.

"...That wasn't funny," she told Inuyasha in a completely deadpan voice.

"Was to me," Inuyasha commented with a smirk, dropping Kagome back into the water. She shrieked before she hit, resurfacing quickly.

Shippou blinked in confusion. "Everyone's okay?" He could have sworn the lake had just eaten his friends...Now who was he going to sue?

"And now, if you're finished," Inuyasha growled, "I'm going to finish my fucking lunch, if there's any left."

Kagome, treading at the center of the lake, watched as Inuyasha picked up his torn shirt and walked away. Shippou stayed perched on a rock by the shore.

"Is it just me..." Kagome finally said, spitting water out of her mouth and coughing a little, "or did Inuyasha actually just turn that joke around on us instead of getting angry?"

"You're right..." Shippou agreed, jaw dropping in amazement. "He actually managed to trick us!"

"You know what this means, don't you?" Kagome asked seriously.

"Our job has become infinitely more difficult."

* * *

"I can't get the water out of my ear," Kagome told Shippou as she looked at her Uno cards...only two left. Her hair was still just damp, hanging down in wavy clumps, but she was comfortably dressed in someone's big tee-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts she'd stolen. It was the cleanest she'd been since the day she arrived in the demon world. Shippou was in much the same state, except he had about eight Uno cards. He wasn't very good at Uno.

"It's Inuyasha's fault," Shippou declared as he laid down his card.

"Isn't it always?" she replied with a sigh, drawing a card. "I'm bored."

"It's Inuyasha's fault," Shippou repeated.

"I know. Too bad there isn't a window or something so that we could escape..." she murmured. Shippou nodded and exhaled sadly. They'd been locked into the bathroom. Every piece of furniture in the house had been stacked against the door. They couldn't even open it a crack for fresh air. They had been locked in there because none of their babysitting company wanted them causing trouble while they went away---Inuyasha, Sango, and Miroku to go draw money out of their bank accounts, and Kouga and Ayame setting up some false clues of their whereabouts at a local bar. They really were planning on (illegally) crossing the border, and Kagome couldn't help but be a little upset that they were getting further and further away from home.

"Can't you think of anything?" Shippou complained, dropping all of his Uno cards onto the ground. They'd been playing Uno for the past hour...and it was getting very boring.

"Hmmm...." Kagome tapped her chin thoughtfully. "If only I had some socks for the inspiration."

Shippou gave her a look.

"Oh, what do you know? I _do_ have some socks!" she said brightly, wiggling her toes. "Well, I'll have to think about getting out...but until then, I have a much more exciting game!" she proclaimed triumphantly. Shippou clapped his hands as Kagome opened up the cabinets underneath the sink. She pulled out a bottle of shampoo and proceeded dumping it all over the floor. Shippou perched on the towel rack and watched with interest as Kagome turned to the sink and used the empty shampoo bottle to splash the floor with water. She leaped up onto the side of the bath tub and, tip of her tongue poking out her mouth, jumped onto the floor and skidded across the bathroom with a joyous shriek. Shippou whooped and then tried it as well, skiing straight into the door with a thump. They continued for awhile, occasionally dumping bath products onto the floor when it began to dry.

And then they were bored again.

"I want out of here!" Shippou whined.

"I know. Me, too," Kagome agreed with a sigh.

"C'mon!" Shippou insisted. "You're an evil genius, this should be a piece of cake for you!" Kagome beamed at the praise and set to work. Shippou was counting on her. She opened up the drawers and cabinets, took out everything that might prove useful, and contemplated her utensils. A coat hanger, several cottony bath towels, a trash can, a canister of toilet cleaner, and the empty bottles. She dug around more until she found a sponge hiding beneath a pipe.

"Now," Kagome said in a sing-song voice. "We don't want to cause permanent damage to Ayame's lovely little cabin..."

* * *

"I hope that girl isn't getting into trouble," Inuyasha growled to Miroku as they slid into Inuyasha's car while Sango finished up the work on her account inside the bank.

"Nonsense!" Miroku argued with a smile. "We locked her in the smallest room of the cabin...there was no window...no explosives...and we stacked every piece of furniture up against the door. How could she have escaped to cause trouble?"

"I don't even want to think about it," Inuyasha mumbled and slid back against his chair.

"Ayame and Kouga are meeting us at the gas station about a mile from here," Sango mentioned as she climbed into the car. "So let's get going, and please try to drive well this time. Having this car is crucial to our survival."

"What's it matter for?" Inuyasha asked gloomily as he pulled out of the parking space. "I lost my Employee of the Month spot."

"Life's just not worth living without that," Miroku told Sango very seriously. The woman rolled her eyes and sighed.

"My life is worth living without the spot, so just pretend like you're sane and drive well."

Some minutes went by, completely silent.

"Why the fuck is it so quiet in here?" Inuyasha eventually asked.

"Feels as if something is missing, no?" Miroku agreed.

"Because the human isn't in here," Sango grumbled.

"...She really is quite loud."

"She's fucking crazy and has no volume control. And she's probably destroying the house."

* * *

Shippou wasn't sure how Kagome managed it, but he let out a delighted yip as she jumped away from the bathroom door as it fell to the floor with a tremendous crash, revealing a mountain of furniture. The two exchanged grins and faced the furniture undaunted.

"Now all we do is pick our way through!" Kagome told him gleefully. So they tunneled through the massive amount of furniture like ants in an anthill...very quickly and biting anything that got in the way.

"Piece of cake!" Shippou told her as they dusted themselves off when the two stumbled into the living room.

"Let's go cook something to eat."

"I concur."

* * *

Inyasha looked _nervous._ So Miroku, naturally, was sweating bullets. Inuyasha never just looked nervous.

"Uh...what's wrong, my friend?" Miroku asked as Inuyasha swore at a red light...but stayed where he was, thanks to Sango reminding him how important it was to pretend to be calm. Although Inuyasha probably didn't really understand what the word calm actually meant, having never been calm before in his life.

"The house is going to be in ruins when we get back. I just know it."

"...It'll be fine..." Sango assured, rolling her eyes. "She's just a simple human...who we know can't actually hurt a fly, despite what the rumors say."

"Exactly," Miroku agreed amiably. "She's just a little energetic, no harm in that."

"Keh! Like hell! She's a fucking loony who manages to destroy everything. The house is going to be in ruins."

"...Luckily it's not our house," Miroku amended thoughtfully, tapping his chin. Inuyasha visibly relaxed.

"Hey! You're right. Ain't our fucking problem."

Sango sighed.

* * *

"Put out that fire, Shippou!" Kagome screeched, dancing backwards and fanning her face.

"How can I do that?! My magic IS fire!" he screamed as he dropped a pan that he had been using to beat at the fire.

"I've got an idea!" Kagome shouted, racing to the refrigerator. She pulled out every beverage she could find. First went the beer...which only made the problem worse...so she trashed the alcohol and started with the milk.

"Keep pouring that on!" Shippou ordered, fluffing his singed tail. So Kagome poured the apple juice, milk, orange juice, and mineral water onto the flame haphazardly, drenching the kitchen in the process. With a sizzle, the fire went out. The duo's supper sat smoking on the stove, but no longer flaming.

"Yum...fried bologna and whipped cream," Kagome said happily, heaping the charred, crumbly lunch meat onto two different plates. The two took a seat at the wet kitchen table and went to eating their failed attempt at cuisine (not only was it burned, but it was covered with every liquid that had Kagome had spilled over it in an attempt to put out the fire) and sipping out of one can of beer, since it was the only thing remaining to drink.

"What are we going to do next?" Shippou asked, taking a small bite out of his food and trying not to make a disgusted face at it.

"I don't know," Kagome replied. "I suppose we should use the television while we have the cha---"

Before Kagome could finish her thought, the demons returned from their plans and entered the cabin with looks of horror. Kagome and Shippou grinned fetchingly at Inuyasha and Miroku as the two demons ambled into the kitchen.

"Yay! You're just in time for supper!" Kagome proclaimed brightly.


	6. Chapter 06: The Dancing Queen

DEMONS, INC.

Chapter 06: The Dancing Queen

* * *

Inuyasha and Miroku's answering machine had quickly become a hotline in their absence. A hotline for what, one can never be sure. However, everyone seemed to know that the two were on vacation, and so took it upon themselves to leave greetings, threats, and other sorts of messages. Mostly threats.

"Inuyasha, Miroku, you retards! You're not supposed to tape OVER security tapes, you're supposed to archive them! You're so freaking stupid, I don't know why you were hired in the first place! Stupid Inuyasha! You don't deserve Employee of the Month! You're a jackass, emphasis on the ASS! I hate your stupid guts, you stupid son of a bitch! Poop-head! If I ever---" The tape, gratefully, cut off there. Nazuna was the temp who filled in when Inuyasha and Miroku were unavailable to do their jobs. She was also insanely jealous of Inuyasha's parking spot.

However, Inuyasha and Miroku could not help taping over security tapes. They had run out of blank tapes a long time ago, and for some reason no one ever gave them new ones. So they just taped over the old ones. Which, essentially, made them useless on most points.

The phone rang again. But, as was to be expected, no one answered. "Inuya---DAMNATION!" someone shouted into the answering machine. "Let go of me, you abominable, regurgitated load of cow crap! I'm going to strangle you with a yo-yo string and hang your innards from---"

No one is really sure who that came from, but we suggest anger management.

"Inuyasha," someone breathed into the phone. "Seven days." Someone screamed in the background. A short bark of laughter was cut off when the phone was abruptly hung up on the opposite end of the phone line.

"If you're happy and you know it, bark like a seal! Ark! Ark!" That was Kagome, who had found Inuyasha's number and was calling it from the cabin. "If you're happy and you know it, bark like a seal! Ark ark!" There was a long pause. "I forgot why I called. Bye bye!" Then she proceeded to repeatedly call and leave similar messages seventeen more times, at which point she finally got bored of it and left with Shippou to do some running amok.

"FINALLY! Who the hell was on the phone before? I've been trying all day to call you! Jeez! I just wanted to say, you're really bad at your job! I can't believe there is a human loose!"

For awhile, the phone was still and silent in the plastic cradle, and the neighbors let out a sigh of relief when the noise ceased. Then they cringed when the phone rang again.

"Inuyasha, honey, this is your mother! Shippou has gone missing and we can't seem to find him anywhere! Oh, bambino! I know you're there! We need your help! You wouldn't go away without telling me, would you, sweetie-pie?" Izayoi sighed sadly. "Alright, cutie-pie, call me back when you get home. I love you!"

And so on and so on.

* * *

"Inuuuuuyasha!" Shippou called as he hopped around by the grill outside. Inuyasha was forging a signature on some legal documents, but Shippou was unconcerned because...well, his other concerns were bigger at the moment. Namely his craving for chocolate ice cream. And the little thing he needed to inform Inuyasha of. That might be important, too, since it could possibly get him some chocolate ice cream. His little mind began to whir on like a computer, mathematically computing the desirable results of having chocolate ice cream.

"What do you want now, pibsqueak?"

Shippou suddenly donned a grave look and Inuyasha let out a great moan. Shippou and Kagome were scheming again, undoubtedly, and Inuyasha did not want to know what it was this time. "I overheard Kagome talking and, well, I heard her say---"

"Hold up! You 'overheard her talking?' Who the _hell_ was she talking _to?"_

"Uhh...now that you mention it...I really don't know. But that's not the point." Inuyasha shook his head, telling himself he would never understand women. Specifically Kagome. Shippou crossed his arms over his chest and set Inuyasha with a deadly glare...the one that scared all his classmates and was enough to rival Sango's look that literally burned people. Not that Shippou could normally back up his glare with anything other than a pitiful squeak and an exceptionally fast escape, but his friends who were just past toddlerhood rarely realized that. Inuyasha, however, went right on constructing fake signatures, but then he never really noticed when he was being glared at until it was far too late.

"Well? What did she say?" he finally asked, annoyed with Shippou just standing there tapping his foot. Children had no respect for adults doing illegal things...and even less respect for those doing perfectly legal things. Not that Inuyasha would know that tidbit.

"Okay, it's Kagome's birthday today!" Shippou declared happily.

"...So?" Inuyasha asked, tongue poking out of the side of his mouth as he narrowed his eyes at a letter on his paper. "We're taking her across the border for her birthday."

"Can I pleaaaaaaaaseeee get a present for her? Can we pleeaaaaaaaaseee throw a party?"

Inuyasha wasn't paying attention---he had blocked Shippou's whining out promptly after 'ca---.' Dotting an i was very hard work and it required most of his mental power. "Knock yourself out, kid. Please."

"YES!" Shippou cheered. "I'll go get the others."

And that was how Inuyasha found himself driving Ayame, Kouga, Sango, Miroku, Shippou, and himself in his four-seat sedan on the way to Party Village, where he would waste more of his money on cheesy decorations and a bad cake. That girl was costing him a fortune...in plastic cutlery and fire extinguishers.

* * *

When Kagome came back from her fishing trip at the lake---which she had managed with her bare hands and feet, although not very successfully---it was to find the cabin completely empty. The suitcases were all gone, never mind she thought she saw the glint of a metallic handle underneath someone's bed at one point, and even the legal documents Inuyasha had been tinkering with earlier in the day were missing...never mind that not even Inuyasha would leave those out in the open where she might get a hold of them. The bathroom products weren't under the sink, never mind that she had used _those_ all up while playing with Shippou the previous day. The furniture about the house was surprisingly neat and put back in place, never mind Ayame was a neat freak from the hours 7 AM to approximately noon each day except on Saturdays. The kitchen did not even smell like charred bologna and burned plastic anymore. Now it smelled like burned lemons instead, but that was because of an accident at breakfast that she was trying to put out of mind.

She tromped outside and stood in the uncut lawn. Kagome narrowed her eyes and stared at the empty driveway. There was no car. The little sedan was gone and hadn't even left behind a single thing to declare its existence. It hadn't even written 'Inuyasha's car wuz here' in the gravel, and we all know how important it is for cars to claim territory. They're practically worse about it than those middle school kids who claim pieces of the cafeteria for their own and fling mashed potatoes at anyone who comes near them.

A lone tumbleweed that looked suspiciously like a shopping bag floated by.

"Where could they go? Shippou! Inuyasha!" she called out. She flopped down to her knees and began poking through the hedges. "Anyone home?" A squirrel-shaped beast bulleted out of the shrubs and raced off into the forest. Kagome looked in the drainpipe near the window. "Kooouga...Ayame? Sango? Miroku? Annnnyone?"

Kagome fell back on her heels. "Wait a minute..." she said, rubbing her chin thoughtfully. "I know what's going on here..." Not even the birds chirped as they waited in anticipation for Kagome's words, which would undoubtedly contain the answers to all life's problems. "I've been ABANDONED!" (The birds were sorely disappointed.) She took a deep breath and screamed out a long, despairing 'no,' just as she had when Inuyasha had cut her hair. And then she went on to exclaim, "My worst nightmare has come true! I have been abducted by demons and left for dead in a quaint demon cottage after those very demons pretended to befriend me! And now I'm all alone until something...happens!"

She paused.

"That leaves only one option for me..." she said, her voice trailing off with a dreamlike quality.

A little bird chirruped, and the squirrel-shaped beast poked out of the forest, cocking its head in curiosity.

"I must take up subsistence farming!" Kagome shouted gleefully. She had always wanted to be a farmer.

* * *

"Golly, subsistence farming is harder than it looks," Kagome said as she sighed despairingly. "I wish Shippou was here."

She had managed to unearth from Ayame's shed a spade and tin watering can. So she dug holes in the lawn, put acorns inside (she couldn't find any other seeds), and then watered each patch of dirt with water from the lake. She had made an entire row of about fifteen acorns, and had then begun to make a second row. She was running out of acorns, but she figured that was alright since her arms were getting tired. There were lots of rocks in the dirt, which made it especially hard to dig.

"What else do subsistence farmers do?" Kagome asked thoughtfully. Maybe they grew something useful, or went into town to sell cows, or even did a rain dance, she thought to herself. She weighed her options. "I think I'll go watch TV instead." She dusted her hands off and skipped into the cabin, settling down in the chair and turning on the television. She flipped through the channels until she came upon a cartoon. She was about to go check on her acorns for new growth when the front door popped open, admitting a very confused and angry-looking Inuyasha, followed by an assortment of other demons...namely, Kagome's temporary care-takers. _Man,_ she thought suddenly. _I sure need a lot of people to care for me._ "I must be high-maintainance," she declared. Everyone just sent her a look before going about their individual businesses.

"Come on, Kagome! Follow me!" Shippou said.

"Wait a minute! I smell something distinctly suspicious!"

Everyone waited with baited breath. Miroku, holding a cake box, squeezed his eyes shut and faced the wall like a boy who was about to be caught shop-lifting.

"It smells sort of...sweet..." Shippou pawed at her hand as she tapped her chin. "Hmm...maybe...vanilla-y...I know!"

No one stirred.

"You guys ate ice cream without me! I bet you went to Dairy King, didn't you?"

Everyone let out their breath and relaxed. Kagome didn't seem to notice.

"How could you!" Kagome continued, bringing up some tears for the occasion. "After all I've been through! Oh, the pain is tremendous! I need ice cream like you wouldn't believe! Don't you understand the trauma you've just put me through?"

"What the fuck are you going on about?" Inuyasha snapped, shoving her off the chair in front of the television. She bumped her head on the table but didn't really seem to mind.

"You guys went off without telling me you were leaving...when I couldn't find you, I thought you left me here to die all by myself while you all escaped!"

Kouga, the only other demon left in the room aside from Inuyasha and Shippou, gave her a slightly guilty look as he observed her doe eyes. He wasn't accustomed to her winsome (sort of) ways yet.

"Do you know what I had to do?" Kagome asked in a pained whisper, doing her best to mimick heroines from horror films when they were pleading for their lives. Most of Kagome's wisdom came from really bad movies. "I had to take up subsistence farming!"

"Is that why there's a bunch of crappy mud patches in the lawn?" Inuyasha asked with a yawn.

"Those are my acorns! I need corn of some kind in my diet!"

"You're corny enough as it is..." Inuyasha mumbled, trying to see through the fuzz on the TV screen.

"Okay, that was bad, even for you," Kagome stated. "Come, Shippou, I recall you have something to show me. I'll forgive you for abandoning me if it's something good."

* * *

"SURPRISE!"

According to a reliable source (perhaps), two out of three demons agree that throwing surprise parties is dangerous. The remaining demon says it's downright hilarious. Especially if that demon is bloodlusty, but that's demonism and is currently politically incorrect so that doesn't go down in the statistics.

It's hard to surprise a demon. They have keen senses, including but not limited to sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and sometimes mind-powers, even though that's not a real sense anyhow, just something fanatics made up to outdo the alien conspiracies people, since it's _all _a big conspiracy that the alien conspiracies people and the mind-powers conspiracies people are all out to get _each other_.

Over the years, demons have developed very creative ways to surprise each other. Like dressing up with tree branches and spraying themselves with pine-scented Riceaul. However, surprising a demon is dangerous for a number of reasons. Because they are so hard to surprise, they aren't accustomed to surprises, so they tend to overreact when they are. For another thing, demons rely on their reflexes and reactions over reasoning and logic...which means if something scares the poo out of them, they are likely to beat it up without a second thought.

Many a demon have been slain in bloody feuds over a friendly birthday surprise.

So the demons who are doing the surprising typically take very cautionary measures, like wearing armor, before surprising other demons.

Therefore, what you get from the surprising-demon is a big, bad, scary creature dressed up in costume often covered with things like spikes, hiding in the darkest corner of the room, with the most pre-emptive measures to stay hidden from any sense, and usually some kind of tool to add to the shock factor. Like a fake head on a pike or a set of novelty fangs or one of those doormats that laughs and shrieks when you step on it.

Demons also don't realize that it only takes a tap on the shoulder to scare a human out of his wits.

That's why it took Kagome approximately -1.2 seconds to scream and run from the cabin like a bat out of hell when everyone yelled 'surprise' at her and lunged out of the darkness.

Kouga, Ayame, Inuyasha, Shippou, Miroku, and Sango stared at the empty place in the doorway where Kagome had stood just moments before. They blinked stupidly for a moment before they recovered from their own shock.

"What the hell..." someone mumbled.

"Does this mean I can have the cake?" Inuyasha asked hopefully.

"Hell no," Sango said. "Go find Kagome, Inuyasha."

"What?! Why me?!" Inuyasha snapped. "Why not Shippou or Kouga or Miroku or---or anyone else?!"

"We apparently just scared her pretty badly," Sango answered as everyone perked up to listen to her infallible logic. "Kouga and Ayame freaked her out the other night, so it's best not to send them after her since she might still be timid around them. Miroku is a pervert and attacked her the other night, so it's best not to send him after her, either. If she sees Shippou, she'll probably grab him and make a run for it before he can explain what happened, so it's best not to send him. Furthermore, I have no particular inclination to chase after her myself, added to the fact I'm the one who purchased the cake and, quite frankly, trust just about none of you except Ayame to not eat it while I'm away. And we all have an inkling that she prefers you...right after Shippou, of course. So hop to it."

"I didn't even want to have this stupid party," Inuyasha mumbled as he turned for the door. His life sucked.

* * *

"There you are!" Kagome exclaimed brightly, struggling to get a rather large stick out of a ditch. "I knew you were around here somewhere. Now you and I have some prime beating-things-up to do." With one final tug, Kagome managed to pull the branch free from the mud and hitched it over her shoulder, at which point she began her slow trek back towards the cottage, where she would beat up the intruders who had killed off her babysitters.

"Ka-Kagome!" Inuyasha called out from the distance.

"ZOMBIE!" Kagome yelled out, hurling the stick in the direction of the sound of Inuyasha's voice. She bounced up into a tree and watched as Inuyasha came into view, looking quite annoyed as he stepped over her discarded weapon.

"Hey, I know you're up there, stinky," Inuyasha growled. "And I'm _not_ a zombie."

"Yes you are! You were eaten by monsters, promptly digested, and made anew as a zombie," Kagome explained. She smoothed out the boxer shorts she still wore.

"Don't be retarded. Those were not monsters. They were us. We were throwing you a surprise party. There is cake back at the house," Inuyasha explained in slow, choppy sentences, looking up at where Kagome sat in lofty tree branches.

"A party? For me?" she asked, blinking. "Why?"

"It's your birthday."

"It is? Really?" Kagome asked gleefully. "I had no idea!" She hopped down from the tree and sidled up next to Inuyasha. "It sure doesn't feel like I've been eighteen for a whole year!"

"Wha...? Shippou said it was your birthday! He said he overheard you talking about it!"

"Oh, that?" Kagome asked, brushing her pants off. "There's a perfectly logical reason for it all."

"If you can offer me a perfectly logical reason for anything you do, I'll officially be amazed," Inuyasha declared. "There is _nothing _logical about you."

"Prepare to be officially amazed!" she said. "I was trying to remember a conversation I was having with my mother the day I came here, because I was trying to figure out how I even got here. I was just saying things out loud to remember them better. That doesn't work so well during math exams..."

Inuyasha was officially amazed.

"So what kind of cake did you get me?"

"Hey! It isn't your fucking cake anymore! It's not your birthday!" Inuyasha looked absolutely scandalized.

"It can be our little secret," Kagome replied with an evil smile.

And that was how the cake ended up being Kagome and Inuyasha's little secret.

* * *

"Inuyasha! You are quite possibly the worst son in history!" Izayoi yelled after the beep. She sounded rather weepy. "You never told me you were a fugitive! If I knew, I at least would have packed you a lunch before you left! Now where are you vacationing? Is Shippou with you? You deserve a wallop! Don't forget to put on sun lotion if you go to the beach!"

Izayoi continued to rant at her son, who was some 500 miles away from his apartment, until the telephone cut her off. Even it was tired of her threats.

* * *

"When are we leaving the country?" Kagome asked in a rare voice of sincerity later that day at supper.

"Tomorrow morning," Kouga supplied. "Well, at least you lot will be. Ayame and I will be heading home and covering your asses." Kouga directed this line at Inuyasha with a glare. Inuyasha, fully concentrated on his dinner, neither seemed to mind nor even notice.

"You know, I am the dancing queen," Kagome informed everyone several seconds later. Almost everyone ignored her.

"Really?" Shippou asked hopefully. "Can you show me some of your grooves?"

Everyone would have ignored that, too, but Kagome knocked the table over, which resulted in a long string of angry and hungry demons chasing the delighted girl into one of the bedrooms.

* * *

Inuyasha was watching more television several hours after dinner. Kouga and Ayame had already left them, planning to be in work by the next day to inform everyone that Inuyasha and the others had not been at their cabin. Shippou and Miroku were out at the lake fishing, since the younger of the two expressed an interest in becoming manlier. Sango, who was convinced this was an act on Miroku's half to help Shippou impress Kagome, came along to offer her helpful insight, which included:

"Miroku, you're so ugly you've scared away all the fish,"

"Miroku, stop using your tiny brain as fish bait, you don't have enough to waste,"

And the ever-popular, "Miroku, I'm going to kick your fat ass into the water." Shippou found this especially delightful.

While all this was taking place, Inuyasha chose to remain at the cabin and watch television with the sound turned down, hoping to alleviate a growing headache. He had lost track of Kagome some time ago, but was growing suspicious of her presence at the onset of a sniffly sound down the hallway.

"If you have a cold, go to bed and quit interrupting my show," he offered in a monotone voice.

"Grrraaa!" Kagome screamed at him, sounding something like a dinosaur in a cartoon. Inuyasha didn't really like this, as dinosaur sounds are often demon mating calls in the demon world.

"What are you DOING in there?" Inuyasha demanded when he heard Kagome turn on the faucet in the bathroom.

"Shut up," Kagome snapped over the sound of the water. "Or I'll put more toothpaste in your pillow."

"Damn it, Ka-Kagome!" Inuyasha yelled, standing up from his chair and racing down the hall to save his pillow. He found Kagome standing in the bathroom with her face bent over into the basin of the sink, water pouring against her cheek. "What the fuck are you doing?!" he demanded quite nicely. He turned off the water and Kagome squeezed her eyes shut.

"I am cleaning my face!" she said in a nasally voice. Inuyasha narrowed his eyes.

"What's wrong with your voice?" he asked. She sniffed.

"You," she answered, logically enough...if by logical, illogical is meant.

"Get your face out of the sink," Inuyasha demanded. "We have to use that." Kagome pulled her face out of the water and spat some at him.

While Inuyasha growled and wiped his face clean of it, he caught sight of her puffy, red eyes and snotty nose. He recognized the face from the first day he had met her, when she wiped her nose on his tee-shirt. He took a step backwards when Kagome sniffed again.

"What's wrong with you?" Inuyasha asked suspiciously. He was never going to understand this woman.

"I want to go home," Kagome told him plainly. "I don't like it here." Inuyasha blinked.

"What?"

"I'm lonely," Kagome said. She squatted down on the bathroom floor and hugged herself. "I miss my family and my friends and my fat cat. I want to go home and watch bad reality television shows, learn the year's wisdom from a series of bad horror movies, and paint my fingernails in accordance with the latest pop sensation." Kagome felt like a little girl. She wanted to act like a little girl. "I want my mommy."

Inuyasha's mouth opened and closed a few times. "How old are you? Are you still a kid?" He could never be sure with Kagome, but he had assumed she was an independent adult by her stage of life. She had mentioned that she was 18 years old earlier---but that number meant nothing to him, because it was in human terms.

"No, I'm an adult," Kagome answered with a sniff and a glare. "I was going to be leaving home this summer, going to University." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "But it's not the same. I could still call my mom, I still know what world I'm in there. I'm scared. I don't want to die. It's hard to accept demons are real. I want to feel secure. I don't want to be by myself."

Inuyasha put a clawed hand on her shoulder. Mentally, he shoved away the resounding memories of her calling him names like _Poop-face, jack o'lantern, _and _Jimmy._ He knew that these tears, rolling down her cheeks, were different from the ones she sometimes used to get her way. These were honest.

"Ka-Kagome..." Inuyasha said. "I won't let you die, and you won't ever be by yourself again as long as you're here. I'm going to get you home."

Kagome smiled weakly and wiped her eyes again. "Thanks, Inuyasha. You've been a good friend. Not outstanding as your sportsmanship, etiquette, and language could use some work, but definitely a good friend."

Inuyasha snorted and stood up, crossing his arms over his chest in a final act of manliness. "Let's go watch the television." That was manly enough, he figured. He let Kagome hold onto his arm on the way back into the living room.

* * *

"Guess what? We have expanded! We no longer enclose ourselves to simply e-mail spam, but now we do answering machine spam as well, returning to the olden ways! We are learning the concept of TOTAL FREEDOM! Inuyasha, how would you like to do some expanding of your own? With our new male-enhancing products..."

Inuyasha and Miroku were going to have quite a lot to keep them busy if they were ever able to return home...that is, if the telephone, tired of stupid messages, didn't adopt some semblance of life and delete the messages itself. But as we all know, telephones leave that to personal computers, Macs, and computer-driven cars.


	7. Chapter 07: 270 Reasons

DEMONS, INC.

Chapter 07: Two Hundred and Seventy Reasons Why Not to Kidnap a Mortal

* * *

"What are you working on?" Inuyasha asked Kagome as he wandered into the living room of their brand new apartment. They were running short on cash and he needed a distraction so that he wouldn't have to consider getting another job. Kagome usually provided.

"I am making a list," she declared with the self-importance of a politician. "It's a list of reasons why it's a bad idea to kidnap a mortal, such as my stunning self."

"Fantastic," Inuyasha replied sarcastically, stepping over her. She was sprawled out in the middle of the floor and since the room had the dimensions of a cardboard shipping box, she took up most of the area.

"I'm on reason two-hundred and sixty-eight," she told him quite proudly. Reason two-hundred and sixty-eight said, _Because I like macaroni and cheese._

That's when Inuyasha noticed what she was writing these "reasons" on.

"Hey! That's my best shirt!"

Kagome gave it an appraising look. "Now it's even better!"

Inuyasha glared at her but found he didn't quite have the energy to chase her, as she was clearly expecting. Instead he plopped down on a plastic chair, the single item of furniture in the entire apartment. (They had stolen it off their new neighbor's balcony.)

"Guess what?" Kagome asked delightedly.

"What?"

"I found you a job!"

"What?!" Inuyasha repeated with quite a bit more energy, like a broken record heating up for its grand finale.

"I was looking in the newspaper, and I called in and scheduled an interview for you." Never mind how that had happened, since she didn't understand a single word of the local language. She unfolded another one of Inuyasha's shirts. "Let's see, I wrote down here that the interview is at 8:00 AM, today!"

"Shit!" Inuyasha swore, quickly changing into his "best shirt" and running down the hallway to collect some more work-appropriate pants (he was wearing his pajamas pants, which Kagome had been delighted to find were decorated with army ants; she had made utmost haste in adding fairy wings to each one of them). It was already 7:37, according to his inate sense of time. (He was actually a bit off. It was really 6:59. He had yet to adjust his clock for All Light Savings Time, which is a random event that takes place in the demon world where all demonic nations' governments cooperate in changing what time of day it is without telling their subjects for no reason but that they feel like it. To date it is the only recorded event in the history of all seven separate dimensions of the universe of multiple governments fully cooperating with one another.) Miroku and Sango, still trying to sleep, groaned as Inuyasha raced through the single bedroom of the apartment, looking for his shoes. This room was about the same size as the living room. Since they didn't have any beds, they had dumped a bunch of blankets and dirty clothes onto the floor and slept on them in a distracted, communal sort of way. There had been lots of black eyes and mysterious bloody noses. Not to mention how late they stayed up gossiping, returning to the fond days of middle school slumber parties. Kagome, on the other hand, felt it was an improvement because it meant no one was afraid of her anymore. It also gave her ample opportunity to practice her slumber party pranks on people. These included drawing cat faces on Inuyasha with permanent marker, putting Inuyasha's hand in warm water in an attempt to get him to pee himself, and braiding Inuyasha's hair.

"Bye bye, Inuyasha!" Kagome called cheerfully as he rushed out the front door. Shippou came out of the kitchen, where he had been eating a breakfast of sauteed tangerines that Kagome had 'prepared' for him, and grinned. (Kagome had a frightful preoccupation with the stove, one could say.)

"Did you tell him what he has to do at the job?" Shippou asked.

Kagome smiled devilishly. "Of course not."

Before they could discuss this further, Sango appeared from the bedroom and cornered Shippou, explaining that they would be enrolling him in the local school district...much to Shippou's unending horror and revulsion. He screamed and fell out of his chair, which sent it flying in the opposite direction. Never mind that physics wouldn't allow for this sort of thing, but everyone knows physics will change on you at the least desirable moment so that you have to throw ten years of research away.

Thus ensued a merry chase around the tiny apartment, to Kagome's delighted amusement. (Especially when she got to use the stove again.)

* * *

"Oh, hell no!" Inuyasha declared out loud as he scuttled to a stop outside of a bright pink building that said, in quite curly, white letters, _The Magical Princess Kingdom of Magical Princess Rin._ The address on the building matched the one Kagome had written down for him, and somehow he did not think that this was a mistake. "I ain't going into that store, and I will not work in it!"

Except that he did, and he would.

* * *

"Look, Kagome's on TV again!" Shippou yelled around his toothbrush (Sango was forcing him to reinstate a personal hygiene regimen at night now that he had to go to school). The TV was a splendid little affair, cased in an attractive shell of white plastic with a shiny, pink plastic ribbon glued to the top. It was very small at a reasonable 8.2 inches and had been lifted from Inuyasha's new place of work. Inuyasha still had his uniform on, which had a pink carousal pony on it. As a matter of fact, the pony looked a lot like the television. The thing about magical princess items is that they must all be pink and white. And a dash of lace, glitter, and ribbon never hurt anything, either.

Kagome, who had been trying to get around Inuyasha (who was blocking the entrance of the single bathroom) in order to cause some mischief, the nature of which she had yet to reveal, let out a delighted squeal and raced into the other room. She was a celebrity!

She got there too late to see the picture, so she deflated like so much sauteed milk cartons, without any fire. The photograph that _had _been there featured an attractive young woman with normal black hair and plain brown eyes, and an expressive mouth showing quite a bit of fear. It wasn't the most flattering picture in the world and was also quite fuzzy, having been capped from a security tape of some sort. Kagome would not have been impressed anyway.

The story (most of it was fiction, fabricated by the media like 99% of everything they ever report on, in any alternate dimension) of her "dangerous" appearance in the demon world concluded and made way for another exciting news story about breakfast cereal scams, which mostly involved a battle over a copyright for the amount of sugar to be placed in two different types of cereal. Kagome didn't even know you could copyright that sort of thing. It also appeared the top legal leaders of the country did not know you could copyright that sort of thing either, but were making a mad dash to ensure the possibility.

"Shit!" Inuyasha swore. It was his favorite cereal that was losing. Kagome flared her nostrils and told everyone they were blockheads and that she wanted to see her picture on the television. Miroku taped a hasty picture that Shippou had earlier drawn of her (playing the banjo; he was going to staple it onto the top of his school folder later) onto the screen and Kagome was quite happy again, watching her sketchy pencil face take on all the colors of the news story behind it. It gave her paper skin an attractive blue tint.

Suddenly, everything that had happened since Kagome's arrival refused to make any sense at all to Inuyasha. Then, remembering that it hadn't even made the tiniest bit of sense _before _this particular point in time, either, he shrugged and went back to blocking the bathroom door, since Kagome was now trying to get back in there.

"I know you used the toilet half an hour ago!" he screamed at her. "You can't possibly need it again!"

"Just goes to show what you know!" Kagome yelled back. "I have highly important things to do!" Like racking up the water bill. Or releasing a tub full of water into the wild. Or, really, the possibilities were endless. The lack of furniture to destroy didn't dissuade her in the slightest. "May I remind you that I'm wearing _your _boxer shorts and have had a total of eight sodas today!"

* * *

Shippou was at school and Miroku and Sango had decided to go out for a morning on the town to scope out their new surroundings as well as find jobs for themselves. Inuyasha was sitting dejectedly on the bed pile and reading Kagome's list of reasons why not to kidnap a mortal. The human herself was sitting with her back against his and dozing, tired after having spent much of the night locked in the bathroom and making an awful lot of needless noise as she tried to re-route the pipes.

Inuyasha was tired, too, but couldn't sleep just then. He was tired because he had missed out on many of his required hours of sleep in light of Kagome's commotion, not to mention the fact that he had been the one who had to re-route the pipes back to proper working order. He would never understand how she got the toilet to flush into the bath tub.

"Reason number two-hundred and sixty-nine," Kagome declared as she fell over and woke up, "girls just wanna have fun."

Inuyasha snorted and changed into his work uniform, leaving the human who had caused all his troubles in life on the floor. Sadly, he realized that he was putting more hours into his current pinky-white, unexciting job at the Magical Kingdom than he had put into his career back home. And he didn't even get a lunch break here.

* * *

Kagome sighed as she looked out the window. Everything had changed since the group had left the cabin in the mountains. Miroku worked in the mornings; he had scored a job at a local studio as a film editor. Sango worked as a night chef at an all-hours cafe, and Miroku spent that time in the restaurant leeching wi-fi and pretending not to be there for the sole purpose of bothering Sango, who in turn told her boss that she had no idea who Miroku was and also dumped hot sauce in his coffee. Shippou spent most of the day at school, and then came home and did his homework. Inuyasha was working full time at the Magical Kingdom. Kagome spent the entire day in the apartment and every day everything felt more and more closed in around her. She wasn't the type of person who enjoyed a cage. There aren't many who do, really, but Kagome especially didn't like being trapped. Not to mention all the alone time had given her too much time to think about her situation and how much she missed her mother.

She had quit her scheming weeks ago, shortly after this routine had started, because there was rarely anyone home with her and the demons typically ignored her when they were home. She realized quite readily that she was in a rut, one like she had never felt before, and she couldn't quite pinpoint the reason beyond the superficial. It felt different that homesickness. Briefly she envied the fact that demons never had psychological issues more pressing than a bruised ego or a bad hair cut. Not even Inuyasha suffered from those, she thought bitterly. Inuyasha's self-confidence bubbled bigger every day, like an overhealthy population of bacteria on an elementary school's water fountain. With chewing gum stuck to the bottom. And he was quite proud of his silver tresses.

Kagome slid open the balcony door and boosted herself up on the rail to watch the grass move below her. It was a rather windy day but the weather was mild, so she spotted several other demons out on their balconies, too, enjoying the sunshine with books or drinks or cigarettes. Their next door neighbor gave her an appraising look, one that seemed to say, _You stole my furniture and I know it._ Kagome gave him a neighborly grin before going back into the apartment.

She turned on the television. There was only one channel she could understand and it was showing an infomercial for perfume, or rather some kind of bottled scent that would kill a normal human (or at least make him convulse spastically) but was immensely attractive to demons. The name was _odorous burnt rubber, by n'Estee Laundry._

She sighed again and went into the bedroom. Sango was snoring softly in the bed pile. Kagome flopped down onto the floor and watched her for awhile before taking a nap herself. Soon, Shippou came home from school. Miroku finished at work and came home and then Sango left. Miroku followed after feeding Shippou and Kagome dinner. Then Kagome and Shippou went to bed after he completed his homework. Inuyasha arrived home.

Day after day. It was like an eternal and lonely summer vacation. So why did it feel worse than all those other boring summer vacations when everyone else had gone on trips without her?

She had no energy for anything anymore.

* * *

Inuyasha was sitting behind the register and listening to cheerful princess songs on the company soundtrack, which was available for purchase at the front register. Nobody had been in all day, but that was to be expected because all the kids were in school at this hour. Around noon high tea would be served to the same three old women who came in every single day, but until then there would be nothing. So Inuyasha had commandeered a princessy pillow from one of the shelves and put it on the countertop for his head. He smashed his face into it and was delighted to find that this dulled the pain of his humdrum existence somewhat. He hated serving tea more than anything else in the world. There were all kinds of teas and he hated each and every one of them. He liked to spike them with the dregs of someone else's tea and see which people expressed their distates. It was rather boring because those who came in for high tea generally didn't care what their tea tasted like as long as it was tea-y and had a hint of fruit or some other delicate sugary thing. So he started spiking the butter for the scones instead. He didn't even want to think about how pitiful it all was. He was not even as creative as the delinquent teenagers whose glitter-glue graffiti he had to clean off the side of the building daily.

He sighed and went back to his pillow. It was a nice pillow. It did all the things a pillow should.

It wasn't long until he was asleep.

While he slept soundly, dreaming of sugar plums and sugar fairies and all those other sugary things except for tea, a tall demon with hard eyes (if that were, of course, possible) entered the store. The dainty bell on the door failed in waking Inuyasha, which didn't surprise anyone. Or, it wouldn't have surprised anyone if somebody had been in there to notice. As it was, this tall, absurd demon stood in the entryway as the door closed behind him. He was much misplaced in this magical setting, dressed in a business suit and donning a cold face like an unfeeling miserly fellow from a Victorian novel. Still, he took careful stock of the store and narrowed his eyes at the man sleeping at the register. As Inuyasha attempted to roll over and landed with a most unprincessly thump on the floor, the businessman raised one humored eyebrow before giving a quiet chuckle and leaving the store, which made the security camera wonder why on earth this man had come in here in the first place. Not that it cared at all after the moment passed. It was time for it to put graffiti on the walls anyway. It so loved to torture Inuyasha.

* * *

It was night time. Shippou was fast asleep and Inuyasha wasn't quite home yet. Kagome was sitting at the kitchen table, drumming her fingers and staring at the fridge.

"Bye bye, I'm leaving the apartment now," she announced before standing up and leaving the apartment. It was a nice night, reasonably cool with a fresh wind blowing in from somewhere, but it smelled distinctly of the sea. Kagome, still dressed in a most fashionable mixture of everyone else's clothes because no one ever took her shopping, _ever_, stretched out her limbs and took in her freedom. It was much nicer to be outside of the apartment. She trotted down the steps and crossed the quiet courtyard, heading into town. She wasn't quite sure where to go. She had Inuyasha's credit card, or at least one of them. Shippou had the other and used it to buy stuff from infomercials during the weekends when he and Kagome were home alone all day long. But Kagome had the other card, so monetarily she was safe (demons aren't especially bright at figuring out forgery). Kagome didn't want to go to a movie because, for one thing, she didn't want to go by herself, and more importantly she still didn't know any words of the local language. She wasn't especially hungry, so she didn't want to go to a diner. She wasn't sure what other things would still be open at this time in the demon world. So she just walked along the sidewalks.

She didn't pass too many demons as she walked, but she found a nice area with a few cafes that were closing up for the night, and a seaside restaurant that stayed open until midnight. She decided to check out a small building nearby, which was one of those high class bars, with romantic lighting, a few little round tables, and a piano in one corner. The piano wasn't being used since it wasn't a weekend, but the radio was on playing some love songs from some well-hidden speakers. As she sat down at the bar, she got an evil eye for her outfit from some of the patrons, but she had been out of a normal social circle for so long that she didn't even recognize the look. She just returned it in her cheeky way without realizing it wasn't socially acceptable before trying to order something that wouldn't require an ID, which was a lot harder than it looks when you can't speak the language.

"Ulio ni tehera-sa?" the bartender said pleasantly, with a warm dark voice that didn't interrupt any conversations going on nearby or disturb the music. It was a nice voice for a bartender. It had just finished wiping down the counter and was now rearranging glasses in order to look calmly, slowly busy. The bartender didn't even look remotely human, so Kagome didn't try to guess what sex it was.

"Hmm," Kagome hummed, hoping that was okay for now.

* * *

When Inuyasha got home, he knew something was wrong. And he really didn't want something to be wrong on that particular night, because it had been a bad night. Earlier in the evening he had discovered that those pesky teenagers were not just scribbling graffiti on the walls of the Magical Kingdom, they were also rearranging all the tea labels (somehow without his knowing) so that he had to spend an extra hour putting everything back into order before he could go home. Inuyasha hated putting things back into order. On top of his hatred for tea, it hadn't been a good night at all.

So he fumed around the apartment, looking for the anomaly. Everything was fine...he winced...which meant...he went into the bedroom. There was Shippou, sleeping sweetly. But of no surprise, Kagome was not there. His face turned red as a tomato in his ire, which was commonplace with regard to Kagome.

"Wake up!" Inuyasha roared. Shippou shot up into the air and exploded with fearful squeals. Like a dud firework, or a cell phone that knows when it's about to be replaced with a newer model so that you can't donate it because darn it, it loved you best.

"What?!" Shippou grumped, staring blearily up at his cousin. His messy hair and tail fur gave him the appearance of an outraged cactus.

"Where the fucking hell is Ka-Kagome?!"

"Kagome's gone?" Shippou whined out, wide-eyed. He started to cry.

* * *

Kagome slumped her chin down into her hand and looked at her glass of water. It was a nice glass of nice water, she thought absently. A perfect little glass of water, not a single lipstick print. Just a few squidges from her fingers. She sighed. She wished she had someone to talk to. At least she was out of the apartment, though. It just made her feel lonely instead of trapped, but she realized she had been feeling lonely at the apartment, too.

Maybe that was the problem. Ever since she and her demon caretakers had arrived here in this country, the golden moment was over. She was all by herself all day and had time to think about all the things that bothered and scared her about this world. All the safety nets she had possessed before felt ripped away. The demons all worked and Shippou went to school, and she watched their brief closenesses fall away around her. She missed her family in the human world even more. She had no idea where she had left her shoes. She wished at least one of the demons didn't have to work.

She tried to put her mind off it by watching the bartender, and then the romantic dining couples. The back wall of the bar was lined with windows, which offered a darling view of the night time sea and the moon's reflection melting in it. She watched that for awhile, too, and felt it was all very surreal with the love songs overhead, mostly because the love songs sounded like they came out of the 80s with lots of crystally synth noises. She tapped her bare foot against the rosewood paneling of the bar and shifted on the stool. Kagome kept distracted track of the couples as they left and came, but had no way of keeping the time. But Kagome knew that Inuyasha would be home by then.

She grinned suddenly with some of her old mischief. He would be ticked off that she was gone. He would be livid. Insanely angry. She wondered if he would come find her or if she would have to return to the apartment to face his tomato face and bared puppy teeth. She almost laughed out loud as she remembered the way his eye twitched in time with one of his ears when he got _really _angry. She hoped he came to get her so she could make a big scene in public, with lots of hair-pulling (his hair, of course) and screeching. Then she could jump around the outside of the building, go down to the ocean. That would be good. She could grab a little boat and---

Her face fell again. And then it would all be over, and everything would go back to being lonely and dull. She hated being in a rut. Two minutes later Inuyasha blundered into the bar, having followed Kagome's distinctive scent (the one that was actually a mixture of someone's cologne and someone else's aftershave; the bartender was trying with all its might to politely ignore it---a smell like that had to be glandular).

Kagome had been watching the sea when he entered, so she didn't notice him come in and she missed his eye twitch. He stomped over and roughly spun her around. She nearly fell off of the stool.

"What the hell are you thinking?!" he growled at her. "You're fucking going to get us into serious fucking trouble!"

She scowled at Inuyasha. "I am having a perfectly nice drink!" She snorted and thought for a moment. Was it worth talking of her troubles at all to him? She couldn't take much more of living so withdrawn. Here she was in a new world and she wasn't allowed to leave a tiny, contained bubble of it. But it was probably pointless to tell him as such because Inuyasha was a demon, and demons didn't have feelings. Did they? Maybe they did.

"You need to fucking go home, right now."

She frowned. "That's what I've been trying to tell you for months," she hissed before slamming her glass down and heading to one of the back windows.

Inuyasha knew something important was happening in that girl's brain. It was more than scheming, but more or less a similar kind of thought pattern. He ignored the upset bartender and watched Kagome's back for a moment. He scratched his forehead. A little of his fury had gone away, now that he knew she was safe. How to approach? He liked it better when she was a maniac.

He scrubbed his face with a hand and, fuming and fidgeting, went to stand beside her. She was watching the sea with a forced determination, trying not to cry or scream or erupt.

"What the hell is wrong with you lately?" Inuyasha snapped.

"I don't know," Kagome said quietly, her shoulders slumping. "I'm not really---I don't, well, I can't define it."

Inuyasha rubbed the back of his neck and rolled his shoulders, bunched up his lats so they made that funny ridge against his shoulder blades, relaxed them all, moved from one foot to the next, cursed silently at the moon for no good reason, and surprisingly did not spontaneously combust as he searched for the words he was supposed to say, the ones that would click perfectly into place in this conversation. He hadn't once in his entire life said the right words. But Kagome wasn't exactly right in the head, so maybe that counted for something.

"Is it?" he wasn't really sure what else to say. "Huh...angry?"

She glared at him. "No," she said. "Don't be an ass hole."

"What?! I'm not being an ass hole, I'm being nice!"

"You don't know anything," Kagome spat belligerently. Sometimes she hated him for being so obtuse. It wouldn't be any problem at all if she understood what exactly was happening to her metaphorical heart (the real one was working quite nicely, with a healthy resting heart rate of 62 beats per minute). "You know nothing at all!"

"I fucking know_ everything!" _Inuyasha insisted. The bartender tried to make hushing noises, sighed and gave up. These were the only two customers at the moment, might as well let them go at it as long as they didn't break anything. Demons need a huge dosage of personal fighting in their daily lives. It is sometimes hard to fit it all in in this workaday world.

"Then why don't you know what's wrong with me?" she pressed in an angry, desperate sort of way, like the way you talk to your flashlight as it gives out when you know there's a dinosaur hanging around somewhere just waiting to eat you the moment all the lights go off. (More of Kagome's wisdom from bad horror movies.)

"Because you're fucking deranged! You're mopey and grumbly and you're stupid!"

"I am not!" Kagome retorted venomously. "I am perfectly normal and sane! You're the one who doesn't ever know what's going on!"

"It's your fault! Why don't you just fucking grow up and get over it?!"

"You're the one who abandoned me!" Kagome yelled out, eyes bright with fury. She jabbed a finger into his chest.

She stopped and blinked, moving a finger to her lip in a thoughtful expression as if she had just heard a quaint, curious little story on the news.

"Oh," she said suddenly, having an epiphany. "I see."

Inuyasha didn't like all this; he was spitting and fuming like a train losing its mind, still trying to process what exactly it was she had told him. His brain was coming to an impassible stopping point, like a calculator that has encountered a divide by zero error. And then he had his own epiphany.

Surprisingly, and most disappointingly, angels didn't start to sing and an unseen sun didn't shine down upon them. The moon's reflection continued quite placidly to slide around the sea waves like butter. The bartender had a glass of water and watched, wishing it spoke this other language. It was sure there was potential for a soap opera in those unknown words.

"You what?" Inuyasha repeated dumbly.

Kagome sniffed. "Nothing." The 80s romance songs continued to sparkle from the hidden speakers and Kagome chewed her bottom lip. Who knew? The reason she felt so bad was because everything seemed, to her, like Inuyasha had left her behind, wasn't going to remember her anymore. She could have laughed with the stupidity of it all, except that it still hurt even now that she had words to describe it.

"I didn't abandon you!" he growled, looking a bit confused. "Why the hell would you think that?!"

Kagome shrugged and began drawing pictures with her fingertip against the cool glass. "Because you and everyone else...well, no one's ever at home anymore, and you least of all, I guess, I don't know, I mean really it's just...Don't get any ideas, I'm just by myself all day and no one ever even talks to me anymore...I guess it just feels like any day you'll all give up and go home and leave me here, and I...miss you." Her eyes burned. She wasn't sure if she was angry still or just upset.

Inuyasha blinked. "But we're all doing that because we're trying to keep you safe!"

Kagome sighed and wrapped her arms around herself. "Doesn't make it feel any different..." she told him gloomily.

The bartender tried not to be too obvious a rubbernecker as Inuyasha clumsily put a hand on Kagome's shoulder. The bartender just loved this stuff, that's why it worked there. It dimmed the lighting a bit more, so the ocean was a bit crisper through the window; how romantic. Despite its valiant efforts, it still watched them with blatant interest as it "cleaned" the counter top. They didn't really seem to notice it.

"Look, uh, I can take---maybe, I'll take a day off a work each week to uh, stay home and make sure you don't cause trouble."

Inuyasha thought that it was very generous of him, and the perfectly best thing to stay in that particular situation. It may have been the nicest thing he had ever said. But Kagome started crying.

"Wh---"

"I want a hot chocolate," Kagome announced. "Right now."

"Uhh, sure." Inuyasha looked over at the bartender, sneered, and barked out a request. The bartender calmly attended in a somewhat bewildered fashion. The hot chocolate was kind of trivial, usually spiked with alcohol. It was really just some chocolate powder and milk, nothing very tasty.

Kagome thumped down at the bar and put her hand against her cheek, plucking up the silver spoon with her other hand as Inuyasha handed the bartender some change.

"Thank you," she said to no one in particular, stirring around a swirl of sugar. Her eyelids were still heavy but she had gained a little control of her outburst. Inuyasha sat down beside her. "Yes," she told him. "Please stay home."

Inuyasha just nodded and let out a sigh. He was exhausted. He couldn't handle this kind of emotional roller coastering.

Kagome peeked up at him from underneath her shaggy bangs and managed a little, watery smile. Inuyasha only rolled his eyes. He began plucking at a paper napkin, the kind only used to set drinks on, as Kagome silkily pursued her hot chocolate. When she was being serious, it was like she was an entirely different person. She wasn't the crazy, uncontrollable, and purely illogical schemer with a mad scientist's personality (which Inuyasha wouldn't admit that he liked just fine, or actually found quite entertaining as a matter of fact). She was a little female with a surprising amount of cleverness and more strength than he gave her credit for, and had an amazing set of lungs. And serious, it was much easier to see her as a whole being, not just some human who had scrambled into his world and turned everything upside down. A whole being with thoughts and feelings and ambitions. Someone who couldn't just be locked up in a house somewhere. Despite the fact she caused him endless amounts of inconvenience.

Though, he had to admit the journey had been fun. He had always known his work at Demons, Inc. was boring for him, but it wasn't until she came in, demanding all his attention, that he realized just _how_ boring...and how much more interesting everything was with her causing trouble.

"Inuyasha," Kagome mumbled as another song came on, a sultry voice singing about guiding stars in comparison to a lover. She gently spun the spoon around some more. "I really didn't mean to make so much trouble, I mean it."

"Keh, it's okay. You didn't wander too far from the apartment I guess..."

She scowled at him. "Not that, I mean here, the demon world. I'm sorry I caused so much trouble, like with your job and life and family, but...I'm not sorry that I'm here. I'm really glad I met you."

Inuyasha's breath scratched a bit, trying to catch in his throat but failing. She turned to face him completely. She was pink. He gave a cocky half-grin to hide his own embarrassment at this sudden confession.

"Of course, I _am _wonderful, after all," he announced quite meaningfully.

She laughed, blinked hazily and seemed to relax into the ambiance. Their eyes rested on each other's for a moment, lips slightly parted. Inuyasha leaned in and Kagome warmly moved forward. He was close enough now that Kagome could feel his warm breath against her lips as she watched him with content, half-lidded eyes. The bartender watched with excited anticipation as Inuyasha allowed his clawed hand to hover near the side of her head, not really sure what to do next. If this were a romance story, they would have kissed just then. But it's not a romance story.

A demon in the shape of a hairy bat swooped down, having been hidden up among the lighting, totally non-moving all that time. It had been there for most of the day. The bartender said, "oh yeah" to itself, remembering when the bat had come in earlier and refused to be prized away, just as the thing scooped Kagome up and fled the restaurant with horrendous speed like...well, like a bat out of hell. Kagome's horrible screech followed it all the way out.

Inuyasha stood blinking for a moment, trying to compute. Say nice things to girl who makes life miserable, almost kiss girl who makes life miserable, girl who makes life miserable gets abducted by giant bat who makes life even more miserable, life has always been miserable.

"What the fuck?!" he roared before tearing out of the bar. There was no sight of them anywhere, and he couldn't catch a definitive scent in any direction because the bat had been flying. "Fucking hell!"

He began racing through the street, accosting random passersby to demand if they had seen any of this at all.

And that's how he temporarily wound up in a mental hospital.

_Reason two hundred and seventy_, he thought to himself, grinding his teeth, as Sango greeted him with an evil grin when the doctors released him at her approval, _I am the one who _always _gets in trouble for the mortal's sake._

* * *

Comments: It pleases me to inform you that Kagome will be back to her normal self by next chapter. ;] I just realized that I really needed some character growth in this... "story."


	8. Chapter 08: Shippou Buys Something

DEMONS, INC.

Chapter 08: In Which Shippou Buys Something Useful From an Infomercial (Maybe)

* * *

She didn't remember who she was, where she was, or why she was in that particular place. Hell, she didn't even remember _what_ she was. Sometimes she thought she was just one more bar on the cell that contained her. So she would stand stock still and straight with all the other bars, but that got boring rather quickly. Occasionally she thought she was the sink, and stood by it and made a few random gurgling noises from time to time. Pretty soon she figured out that if you filled the real sink with water and plugged it up with a tissue paper from the toilet, you could see a reflection. That's how she learned she was a person. She recognized that those were people features. Nice black hair (although kind of shaggy), nice brown eyes, nice normal features. She scratched her cheek thoughtfully. Now, she needed to figure out why she was there.

The most logical way to go about doing such a thing was to decide what service this room could possibly provide a person, because she was a person and she happened to be in that room, therefore she must be in the room for a person's reason. If she knew what the room was for, then perhaps she would know what it was she needed to do.

Just as she was deciding that, no matter how useful, it was a rather ugly room, another person came to the bars that comprised one wall of the room, standing a foot or so away from the gritty cold iron. It almost made her smile to remember that one time when she had thought she was one of the bars. Had it only been fifteen minutes ago? It felt a lifetime. Without any personal memories, and with most of her frame of reference like a rotted cabbage, she felt positively newborn.

The other person did not have features as nice as hers. She was rather crudely cobbled together, in the mind of the girl in the room. She had pointed ears, which the girl in the room somehow felt were unnatural, and her eyes were a soggy red color like so much old rust. The other person narrowed her eyes and her lips parted, revealing slightly pointed teeth. That was not attractive at all to the girl in the room. She liked her people with nice, omnivorous teeth.

"You're awake," the woman outside the room stated.

"Quite awake," the woman inside answered back, glad to see that at least she had some communication skills, even though she couldn't remember how she had gotten them.

"Tell us how to activate the Shikon Jewel," this new person demanded.

"What is the Shikon Jewel?" she asked nicely. "I will be happy to help if I can."

Eyes narrowed further, until they were almost squinty. "Just make it easy on yourself. Tell us now and no one will have to torture you."

"I'm not sure what you're talking about."

The woman outside the room turned around and said, "I'm going to assume she's lying, but if you blockheads put a brick to her brain I swear I'm going to rip you all to fly paper."

"Why would someone have put a brick to my brain?" the woman inside asked. "Was I at all making a nuisance of myself?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact, you were. Now tell us or else I'll have to let boss ask you, and boss is not a kind man. Actually, he's downright unpleasant."

"Why do you bother with him if he is unpleasant?" the woman inside asked.

"He pays well," the woman outside said.

* * *

Shippou had finally fallen asleep, after two solid days of crying. That's all that mattered to Inuyasha as he tried to concentrate on the road before him. Sango was sitting quietly in the passenger seat next to him, staring forward, while Miroku was sitting with Shippou in the back and watching the scenery pass by outside.

Well, that's not really all that mattered to him. Not at all. But it was nice not to think about anything else as they traveled the long road back to to their home country.

Nobody had been happy with this plan in the beginning. It felt like they should be doing something more dynamic, like charging into some building, somewhere, where Kagome was being held prisoner. But there was nothing for it. The bat demon was gone, no one was forthcoming with details, and furthermore Inuyasha found out that he had been working for his brother all that time at the Magical Kingdom. It baffled him how his brother could own such an establishment, but apparently it was all for his adopted daughter Rin.

Well, anyway, they had no reason to stay in that place. Really, there was nothing else they could do. So they had hopped into the car and started driving back home.

"You know what's been bothering me?" Sango asked suddenly. "It's that damn hooded figure that chased Kagome when she first arrived here."

It was bothering everyone else, too. A lot of things were bothering them all simultaneously, which should have worn out all those things. But it didn't. They just bothered them all the more.

"Someone deliberately pulled her here," Miroku stated. "But who or why?"

"We'll find out soon enough," growled Inuyasha, stepping on the gas. "No one gets away with this shit."

In the back of his mind, he was remembering Kagome's accusation. That he had abandoned her. Now he had to prove that bitch wrong and show her that he would not ever abandon her. He did not wish that kind of torture on _any _of his fellow demons. Not even that jack ass who had stolen his crayons in the third grade and melted them down into a brown ooze that was eventually used to stop up one of the toilets in the boy's bathroom. Okay, that part had been a little funny, but not the part when his crayons had been stolen.

* * *

The bat demon, called Sam, paced around his hotel room. He was rightfully furious. Somehow? Somehow? Kagome had gotten away from him. Hadn't she?

He had found out her old residence from the neighbor whose chair she had stolen. But that apartment had been abandoned with nothing in it but some dirty clothes and a white plastic lawn chair.

Boss wouldn't be happy, not at all. Sesshoumaru had found the girl the first time, and had been the one to tell Kagura, who had told boss. That was when he, the great bat demon Sam, had been contacted to abduct her. He had decided to hang out in the bar before making his move because the bar was the only place nearby that had the type of wood he was capable of consuming; he really had no way of knowing she would actually be there that night. He had planned to nab her in the early afternoon the next day. He would have followed Inuyasha home, hid somewhere nearby, and waited until everyone but the girl was gone. Then he would have snatched her. But it was much better to grab her right then and there that night and fly off with her.

What good luck that she had ventured out into public, and stumbled into the one place in the country that had food capable of sustaining the great bat demon Sam. Undeniably good luck.

And then she had gotten away. Right? Or had he already turned her in?

He hesitated in his pacing. It wasn't necessarily certain that she had gotten away. Kagura might actually have her now. The situation had been fifty-fifty. It was all a big confusion to poor Sam. Well, he decided to assume that Kagura had custody of Kagome. It was a good assumption that was making more and more sense the longer he thought about it. Mostly, that was because his memory wasn't very good and he tended to forget almost all new data every thirty minutes or so, so if he was thinking about something for too long the thoughts inevitably became facts to him for the next thirty minutes just because that kept his brain from pooping out. Once he had accidentally convinced himself that he was in fact two hundred and seventy pounds (he was one hundred and twelve, made of nice hollow bones), had eight eyes (he had only two, and neither worked especially well), and sold insurance for a living (not terribly different from being a professional assassin and kidnapper), all because he had been wondering what it would be like to have such attributes for five minutes too long. It was a confusing life he led.

He left the hotel room and started his voyage home, which he could locate from anywhere in the world (one of the few facts permanently stored in his brain). By the next day, he would completely forget that there was ever a person named Kagome, or a human in the demon world at all.

That's why he was a useful kidnapper and assassin, and also why he had forgotten every single one of his marriage anniversaries and court dates.

* * *

She stared at the human in the cell. Kagura had just returned from a slightly annoying issue. That bat had come yammering around for the second time, saying that he had found the human. But Kagura said no, her team had captured the human only hours before. Then the bat admitted it was deeply confused and supposed Kagura had the human after all, and then went away. This was good, because the bat didn't demand any sort of payment for helping track down the human, and the bat hadn't done an especially large amount of work anyway.

Now that _that _particular matter had been cleared up, she stared at the woman who was on the dirty mattress in the cell. That fragile human had indeed forgotten just about everything, and was perfectly useless. More useless than those weight loss patches that banner ads are always trying to sell.

The human looked over at her, sat up, and smiled cheerfully.

"Alright, you must remember _something," _Kagura said through gritted teeth. She wished someone else had been assigned to the girl. This was too gentle for Kagura's liking. She preferred to take care of matters by running through her problems with a sharp object. If you want to talk about rendering a big problem into a bunch of smaller ones in order that they may be methodically solved in a grown-up fashion, splitting them down the middle with a sword is a great way to start.

"I remember that I am indeed a person, not a sink," she chirped.

Kagura dragged a hand down her face. Somehow her make-up didn't budge. "Your name is Kagome, alright? Kagome."

The woman frowned. "I don't recognize it. But if you say so."

"You came from the human world," she said. "You were brought here for a very specific purpose, and that purpose is to unlock the Shikon Jewel."

"Why?" the woman said. "What does the Shikon Jewel do?"

"I'm not at liberty to tell you that, Kagome." Suddenly Kagura smiled with a most evil grin, reminiscent to a woman who has just accepted a marriage proposal and is already planning her fiance's fate. "But to...stimulate your memory...I will introduce you to our special therapy machine..."

* * *

Shippou watched the television blearily-eyed. Everyone else had gone to sleep, and Sango had gone to her own home for the night. One apartment, another one---why did it matter where they stayed? Kagome was gone. Oh woe.

He sniffled. His only consolation was the endless supply of infomercials. Oh, and listening to Inuyasha delete all the old messages from the answering machine. That was kind of exciting (especially when Inuyasha came across one of Kagome's many messages)...but not as exciting as his retail therapy.

He had bought all sorts of things. An exercise machine called the dough-flex, several bottles of perfume, an entire collection of mint coins, a few gem stones, an elixir of youth, a 10-CD set of nature tracks, a pet shark, and a calendar from 1832. They would be arriving any day now. He would just have to purchase more things in the meantime. And while he did so, Inuyasha's credit card bill was rising phenomenally, unbeknownst to him. He was in for a huge surprise at the end of the month. Namely one that would cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But really, Shippou had nothing else to do. No one helped him on his math homework anymore; Kagome had always been the one to help before. So he was now failing math class. After only one day back. Let's not talk about how that happened. Everyone knows that math grades randomly plummet for no reason at all, especially at the end of the semester when it's time to worry about finals.

Now he was going to buy a juicer. Senseless fruit destruction sounded like his next big hobby. He would murder every orange he found in Kagome's honor, and he was going to start right away. That's right, he was going to get _Overnight Shipping!_

* * *

Kagome tried not to make too much noise as she gasped for air, ducking down behind some available trash cans. She rubbed her head painfully, which was still tender from the brick she'd been hit with, but she put that out of mind quickly enough. She gave a quick look around and noticed that things appeared to be normal. The demons in the street were going about their businesses in the usual fashion, frequently fighting with one another. All normal there. No one had chased her yet. Hopefully she would have some time before her disappearance was noticed...she had to hurry.

First of all, she went back to the apartment...only to be told that the previous tenants had moved out and that she was a wanted woman for having stolen the plastic lawn chair, and could face up to five years in prison and up to $2000 in fines.

"Ah, alright, I'll go to jail, but let me just get my...pocketbook."

"That sounds acceptable to me," the landlord told her amicably, just as Kagome was wondering what exactly she would do with a pocketbook if she had one. Probably make Inuyasha hold it so that he would look feminine.

So Kagome left---to the nearest car dealership, where she extracted Inuyasha's credit card with a devilish smile, and browsed the selection of fine sports cars while singing a James Bond tune.

If the morning begins with TWO grand escapes from bloodlusty, not to mention murderous, demons, you might as well end it with a classy 1.8 million dollar car!

Inuyasha was going to be in debt the rest of his life. Kagome cackled evilly as she peeled out of the parking lot, unaware that Douglas the cars salesman was cowering in fear behind his desk. He was terrified of that downright humanly woman---and besides, who on the demon world had EVER insisted on paying full price without one dollar of bargaining involved?! It just wasn't right!

Finally gaining access to a major highway, convertible top down with the wind blowing through her unfortunately short hair, Kagome mentally reviewed her plan. First she was going to find this "boss" that everyone kept talking about and personally kick his rump out the window. Once she'd disposed of his body appropriately, she was going to go shopping, take over the demon world and instate a huge tax policy that would result in total and complete economic failure, and then she would return home. Once at home, she was going to ace Calculus.

Yeah, that's right. That Calculus exam wouldn't know what hit it!

Oh yes...she'd have to think of a good way to embarrass Inuyasha appropriately...(Because a 1.8 million dollar car wasn't suitable enough for revenge.)

* * *

"This just in! We've received word that the human who, several months ago, had escaped into our blighted, war-torn, and otherwise utopian paradise has finally been apprehended and appropriately disposed of. The president of Demons, Inc. has the following to say about this issue, including details on her gory death..."

"Oh no..." Sango mumbled. "Inuyasha...you'd better come see this."

Inuyasha moved away from the computer, where he'd been surfing Boogle and MeTube for the past fourteen hours straight for any spare scrap he could possibly associate with Kagome. He was wearing attractive glasses (never mind where those came from since demons have perfect eye sight). Finding clues to Kagome, to be honest, meant frequently watching lolcats slideshows.

"Oh shit. You don't think..." he mumbled.

"But I do..." Sango answered.

"Well," Miroku piped up. "That certainly explains a lot."

"It does?" Inuyasha asked. "Because I actually didn't have anything to finish my sentence."

Sango rolled her eyes. "Think about it for a moment. Think about Kagome's weird circumstances in arriving here. Think about how Kagura has been snooping around. And finally, think about how...why...could Demons, Inc. possibly be lying about having 'disposed' of Kagome?" Of course they would never believe that anybody could actually do Kagome in. It was just unthinkable. Beat her up, maybe. But kill her? Nah. Just wasn't happening.

"It's all clear to me now!" Miroku shouted like a man who has heard invisible angels sing on high. "Demons, Inc. is behind it all!"

Sango slapped her forehead in dismay. Sometimes she felt like a glorified babysitter. (Which, in fact, was exactly what she had been for the past few months.)

"Now Sango, let's celebrate this monumental discovery with---"

Sango glared at him. "You do not want to finish that sentence..."

Except that he did, and he would. Sango rewarded him appropriately. Miroku spent the rest of the afternoon, teary-eyed and smoking from his hair, trying to tape back together the pages from his immense naughty magazine collection. He couldn't believe that Sango would be so cruel as to rip them all to shreds...and that Inuyasha was willing to sit nearby and laugh hysterically the entire time.

* * *

"What do you mean a routine traffic stop?!" Kagome yelled at the policeman who had dared pulled her over.

"We do these things at the border! Now where's your passport?" he shouted back. "We have to ensure you're legally crossing!"

Kagome was in deep trouble. Not only did she not have a passport, she didn't have any ID at all, no insurance papers, and the car was even in Inuyasha's name anyway because she had forged his signature. The car of course had every intention of keeping Kagome's secret. (This is where it winks at you conspiratorially.)

"Well, where's YOUR passport?!" she demanded. "I insist on seeing your passport first! You're probably not even a real cop!" She ignored the fact that he was surrounded by every other cop patrolling the area---about twenty of them---and a matching ring of cop cars with their lights going. If it was a ploy it was a rather good one.

"What the hell? Just cooperate or I'll have to arrest you!"

"You don't _have _to arrest me, you just _want _to arrest me!" Kagome was really running out of ammo for this and was trying to think of a monumental escape plan. She wondered how she could escape kidnapper demons _twice _and yet be done in by a routine traffic check.

"At the rate you're going, of course I want to arrest you!"

"Wait a minute!" Kagome shouted. "This is police brutality!" She was pretty sure it actually wasn't police brutality at all, but she had always wanted to yell that out at the top of her lungs.

The cop's jaw dropped. All the other police took several steps backwards, their faces plainly horrified.

"Please, miss, please don't say that! You have no idea what you're about to do!" the cop begged, looking around to make sure there weren't any camera crews nearby to catch her statement.

"And now you're insulting me as well! That's it! I'm taking this story to the PRESS!" she threatened gleefully, pointing her finger into the air to emphasize her exclamation.

"Fine! You can go! Just please, for the love of television, don't take it to the press!" he yelled at the top of his lungs, stepping out of the way with a mouthful of swear words. The other cops accompanied him and went off to move their cars out of the way, grumbling like a bunch of empty stomachs (or it may have just been Kagome's empty stomach).

"Sure thing!" Kagome said with a thumbs-up as she racked back up to top speed. Not that she was going anywhere in particular---she had no clue where this "boss" was. Maybe that part of the plan should come _after _she took over the demon world...

* * *

Kagome stopped to get dinner the moment a town came into sight. She settled for trying to clean out an all-you-can eat buffet, starting with the desserts section. (Every demon who came tried this, as they have enormous appetites, and yet, somehow, the restaurant had managed to stay in business. It was the only all-you-can eat buffet in the entire demon world, and everyone figured they got most of their funding from shady backroom deals.) As she stuffed another bite of triple-layer chocolate cake with chocolate icing and chocolate shavings into her mouth, she considered writing a best-selling fad diet book. Eat whatever you want, as much as you want, and annoy everyone else in the process. A guide to causing demons as much trouble as possible while eating as much as possible.

"What the hell were you thinking?!" a caustic voice sounded out behind her before she could think of the opening line of her book. She sat straight up and dropped her fork, but didn't turn around. Slowly she picked up her fork again and took a bite, pretending not to hear the voice behind her. "Do you know how hard we've been looking for you?! And here you are eating _cake _of all things!"

Kagome turned around and gave a deadpan stare to the group advancing on her.

"How the hell did you even get this far away from the apartment?!"

Kagome narrowed her eyes and cast a quick glance around the buffet. No one was staring at the scene being caused by the angry group. Demons are violent creatures. If you come into a restaurant peacefully, that's what'll get you a roomful of stares.

"Wait a minute..." Kagome grumbled, picking up her fork higher. She was prepared to fling cake if necessary. Poor cake. It was born to lead a miserable life, the fate of all cakes. This particular cake had never been happy a day in its life.

"Come on, bitch! Let's go kick the slimy ass of that bastard who kidnapped you!"

"Alrighty!" Kagome replied happily. She flung her fork down onto her plate and vaulted over her chair. (The cake later got thrown into the trash, made a daring escape, and became the first sentient cake known to demonkind; shortly it became a millionaire and was no longer miserable, until someone finally ate it, at which point it became miserable again.) She smiled evilly. "Let's take my ride!"

* * *

"Alright, it's time to get this started."

Kagome grinned. "You bet. Let's go!" While the demons scattered, Kagome boldly approached a tall office building. It had the Demons, Inc. logo in big white letters on the top. She had no idea who those demons had been, but they had seemed to know _her _well enough. And they had led her straight to Demons, Inc. headquarters, where apparently her captor was. That was good enough for her.

Kagome decided it was best to do things with a head-on approach. Bare-footed, still wearing boxer shorts and a tee-shirt belonging to the others, smelly as sin, hair in a cloudy mess, she moved to the door and pushed inside. The building was nicely air-conditioned, and a big oak desk in the middle of the room was manned by a petite secretary typing busily. A coffee table with three plush chairs around it sat in one corner to serve as a waiting room. Surprisingly there was actually one styrofoam cup of coffee on it. Two doors were on either side of the desk, both closed with card-key readers on them.

"Hello," Kagome chirped cheerfully to the secretary as she walked by to one of the doors. "I had a lovely lunch break."

The woman just stared at her with something akin to disbelief, mouth slightly parted, even as Kagome pulled out Inuyasha's credit card. The telephone rang and she turned away from Kagome to answer. Happily Kagome moved to the door and slid the credit card between it and the doorjamb. With a satisfying click it popped open and she moved inside, somewhat surprised that such a simple thing worked. (Were the key readers for decoration?) She was going to try it out in the zoo the instant she got home.

Once inside, her cheer morphed into horror. She was staring down an endless hallway with pristine white doors, each with gold nameplates. For a moment she terribly thought she would have to search each room. After a quick glance around the hall, however, she located a stairwell and rushed downstairs (of course, after she personally unscrewed and removed the bolted door), even more horrified as the obsessively clean office turned into a dungeon. Complete with stone walls and flickering torches. Maybe she should have tried the upstairs first...

"Oh brother," she said as she moved past the first cell. In moving by the second she stopped stock still and stared inside. "Hey you!" she called.

A woman, previously lying in the bed, looked up and smiled tiredly. "Hello," she said. "I'm Kagome."

"...Wait a minute...I have to think about this for a sec..."

Was this a robot designed to take her place? A brain-washed demon? Could demons even be brain-washed? Did they even have brains? Kagome narrowed her eyes at the woman inside. They looked a little alike, but weren't distinctly similar. Sure, the same hair...similar eyes...but definitely different bones. So the woman inside wasn't even Kagome's evil twin.

"Darn it, I've always wanted an evil twin," she announced. "Kagome" from inside the cell looked at her oddly.

"What's an evil twin?" she asked.

"Never mind that. Are you sure you're Kagome? Because I'm Kagome."

The woman frowned. "No, but if you're Kagome, too, I suppose you're the one they're actually looking for."

"Someone's looking for me?" she asked, slightly bewildered just because she liked to make that particular expression. "Who?"

"A man named Naraku, though everyone calls him "the boss." A lady named Kagura will be by soon if you want to hang around and talk to them. They aren't terribly pleasant people, but I don't think they're bad at heart...they just want to activate something called the Shikon Jewel."

"What's a Shikon Jewel? Hey, never mind. I've got a plan, Kagome! Wait a minute...are you a human?"

"Of course," the other Kagome scoffed.

Kagome blinked. "Well I'll be! It seems there are two of us in this world after all. How did you get here?"

"I don't remember. I've lost my memory," she said, getting a sort of nostalgic look on her face. (She was remembering when she had first found out she was a human.)

"Oh. Oh well, like I said before. I've got a plan, Kagome! Watch what I can do..."

The other Kagome watched patiently as Kagome slipped through the cell bars and joined her in captivity. "Okay, here's what we're going to do. When they come, you'll hide under the bed and I'll pretend to be you. I'll kick Naraku's bum-bum!"

"Okay," the other woman said cheerfully. "But be careful, because they---"

"Shh, hide! Here comes somebody!" Kagome raced to the bars to see who was coming. Almost immediately she recognized Kagura, elegant, tall, and as well-groomed as she had been during Kagome's first observation. Kagura came to stand by the bars, briefly narrowed her eyes at Kagome before shaking her head, and then pulled a cigarette out of a silver case in her coat pocket.

"So, Kagome," she began as she perfumed the place up with smoke. "Do you feel like telling me about the Shikon Jewel today?"

"Nope," she said cheerfully. "Mainly because I have no clue what you're talking about."

Kagura closed her eyes and sighed. "I'll give you a moment to reconsider..."

"You needn't give me that long," Kagome said. "I'm not going to suddenly know what a Shikon Jewel is. Are they mined in Brazil? That's where aquamarines are mined. Hey, do you know where rubies are mined? I'm not sure. Africa maybe? What's your favorite gem stone? My friend Eri, she hates any gem that costs less than a thousand dollars. She's lost three boyfriends that way. Oh yes, anyway, perhaps if you tell me about the Shikon I can help you out. Where's Naraku?"

Kagura watched her suspiciously. "I see your memory is beginning to come back..."

"It comes in little waves. Hey, where's Naraku? I need to ask him a question."

Kagura shook her head. "Kagome, if you're going to refuse to tell me anything, you know what I'll have to do."

"Take me to see Naraku? Possibly clean my toilet? Stop smoking in my face?"

With a frown, Kagura said, "That's that, then. Come along, I'll take you to the uh, Special Therapy Machine."

The other Kagome underneath the bed let out a horrifying scream of terror and pain.

"What the hell was that?!" Kagura snapped, looking around the dungeon's hallways. The reverberating echoes of the other Kagome's screams were particularly loud against the stone walls. Kagome swore she even saw a torch flicker out.

"My stomach," Kagome replied. "I'm devilishly hungry."

Kagura huffed. "Whatever, uncooperative brat." She popped open the cell's door and grabbed Kagome by the wrist. "I'm really surprised you've lasted this long. I guess all those rumors about humans might be founded on some simple grain of truth..."

"Wait, why are you surprised? I hope you know who you're dealing with here." Kagura only rolled her eyes as she led Kagome silently down several flights of stairs, through some twisting hallways, and finally into a dome-shaped room that distinctly creeped Kagome out. It was decidedly chilly at the lower level, perhaps being disconnected from the Demons, Inc. building as much as possible meant it wasn't getting regulated via an ever convenient thermostat. However, it did lend to the general atmosphere of the place being the deepest, darkest, most remote place of the dungeon. Everyone knows atmosphere is half the battle! (Half the battle to what, we may never know.)

Kagura smirked. "Are you still sure you don't want to tell me?"

Kagome took quick note of the room. It, like the rest of the dungeon, was constructed of dark stones. The sconces bracketed on the rounded walls bore bright torches that illuminated an array of strange metal utensils around the room.

"Is this a torture chamber from the middle ages?" Kagome asked. "This looks just like a sketch in my history book. Oh, don't tell me you're going to draw and quarter me or something like that if I don't tell you." Kagome offered an evil smile.

Kagura seemed a little thrown off. "Uh...you were just here yesterday, don't you remember the Special Therapy Machine?"

Somewhere in the distance, a horrified scream...

"That was weird," Kagome said after a moment of silence during which Kagura tried to figure out where exactly the noise had come from. "Anyway, may I please speak to Naraku before I'm re-introduced to this stupid machine?"

"Why? Does it have something to do with the Shikon Jewel?"

If it had been in Kagome's nature to do anything logical, she would have lied convincingly just then. Instead, she couldn't resist a chance to say something that would make herself laugh (mentally of course, she wasn't _crazy_ or anything).

"No, it has to do with his enormously sized rump," she replied very professionally.

Kagura hissed at her and dragged her to the center of the room.

"Oh, is this the machine?" Kagome asked, showing more curiosity than fear. She was staring down at a concrete bench with an upholstery back crudely attached, as if someone had stolen it from a car rather than made it particularly for the machine. It had straps on it with titanium buckles that bore the logo Magical Princess Rin, and a strange concave piece of rubber attached to a metal arm was on a rolling stand next to it. "What the heck is this gonna do?" She noticed that the arm had a cord, and the cord was plugged into a power outlet, which took several points off the creepy middle ages torture machine factor and made it seem more like an electric toilet plunger gone wrong.

"Why the hell aren't you frightened?!" Kagura demanded in a low voice as she watched Kagome surveying it. "You are truly a baffling creature." She grabbed Kagome's arm yet again and dragged her closer, throwing her down onto the bench.

"No way, I don't think so," Kagome said as she jumped out of the chair. "I have no intention of figuring out this thing first-hand. You can go first."

Kagura gave Kagome a frustrated rake of claws across her face. "You annoying twit, sit _down _or I will destroy you!" Kagura yanked her arm again.

"No way!" Kagome repeated from behind a row of bleeding cuts. Her poor, delicate, angelic, fragile face! She struggled as Kagura latched onto her other arm. Kagome placed a foot into Kagura's gut and pushed forcefully. This always worked on her brother.

"Do you think those puny tactics will work on me? Kagome, you'll tell us about the Shikon Jewel or be tortured until you do!"

"Never! _This is Sparta!" _Kagome yelled as loudly as she could. Her shrieky voice gave Kagura a moment of weakness---the demon faltered. Kagome broke free and raced towards the door screaming out _Sparta _over and over. She ran right into a solid figure who had been standing in the doorway.

"Kagura," a tall man spoke with quiet power. Kagome's screams died in her throat as the man put a hand on her shoulder. She swallowed thickly. Now she was beginning to be afraid. This was no longer entertaining to her; as a matter of fact, things seemed to have moved out of her favor entirely. "This is the most embarrassing torture session I've ever witnessed."

"I apologize, boss," Kagura said with a barely contained sneer. "I invite you to try."

Naraku's thin mouth curved upward on one side in a smirk. "How does that sound, Kagome?"

"Not very pleasant," she squeaked as he turned her around gently. Now she knew why everyone called him _boss _rather than by his name. Why people had been afraid of disappointing him. Why he was, actually, in charge. This rather tall and well-built man, imprisoning her with a simple touch to the back, spoke of more power than Kagome had ever encountered before. It was in the lines of his face and the smooth voice, the unknowable eyes and the contemptible arrogance with which he carried himself.

So she did what anyone in her situation would do.

She began screaming and running in crazy circles.

* * *

Comments: Okay, so Shippou didn't buy something useful this chapter. I guess that's next chapter. I ran out of room. o_O (For some reason, the thought of Inuyasha watching lolcats slideshows really entertains me...like...disproportionately entertains me.)


	9. Chapter 09: Inuyasha and the Two Kagomes

DEMONS, INC.

Chapter 09: Inuyasha and the Case of the Two Kagomes (at Which Point He Nearly Has a Heart Attack)

* * *

Inuyasha grumbled, paced around the room, and waited for his computer to finish its current task. After his outrageous credit card bill, he'd demanded to know who the hell had bought a car with his money. So he started by going to the dealership where it had been sold, and he cornered Douglas and made him relinquish information regarding the recent purchase. (Of course, Inuyasha didn't even think to ask for a description of the _person _who had made the purchase.) Then Inuyasha discovered that the car was equipped with a GPS navigation system, at which point he downloaded the software to track the car onto his computer. Now he was waiting for it to locate the car. Then he was going to go after the car and smash its windows out, and maybe afterward throw rocks at whomever had purchased it. In the meantime he paced angrily.

Sango and Miroku were off looking for clues to Kagome. Luckily, Sango had never been legally connected to Kagome in the first place---as a matter of fact, no one ever realized she'd gone with Inuyasha and Miroku to begin with---so she safely went back to her restaurant and listened intently to gossip while Miroku checked out backlogs of newspapers in the library. No one would ever realize it was Miroku. If they did, they would probably faint in surprise to find he was not looking at something naughty. Shippou was in the kitchen dumping orange after orange into his new juicer. Sometimes the little machine made incredibly terrible noises, since Shippou decided all good orange juices needed a pureed gem stone to improve the flavor. Gem stones, as one might guess, do not especially like to be pureed. Actually, they downright hate it. Shippou, being a gem stone bully, took delight in their awful agony.

Inuyasha paused, suspicious, as his brand new car was located. He narrowed his eyes. Demons, Inc. headquarters? He wondered if this was maybe a trap. He frowned.

"Shippou! Hey, cut the fuck out whatever you're doing in there! Damn kids," he swore. "I'm going to go smash out some windows! Stay here in case the others come with news about Ka-Kagome. You got it, punk?!"

"I got it, Inuyasha. Bring me some ice cream on your way back. And some more oranges, please!"

"Yeah fucking right," Inuyasha replied with a snort. Grabbing a baseball bat that was autographed by the latest baseball heroes (thanks to Shippou's infomercial habits) he headed for the door.

* * *

"You're a maniac!" Kagome screamed as Kagura managed to pin her to the ground. She heard her ankle pop painfully as the majority of Kagura's weight landed on her legs. Two other demons whose names Kagome had determined were Hiten and Manten piled on top. She was in too much stress to recognize Hiten as the one she had seen so many months ago in Demons, Inc. They had been called in to help restrain her, not that it had been doing much good. But now they finally had her, and she was exhausted.

"If you try to tie me to that chair, you're in for a world of trouble!" she shouted. She was desperately trying to think of a plan.

Why wasn't her horror movie wisdom coming to her? Oh yeah. This was the part where the heroine of the film gave up and got decapitated or punched through with kitchen knives. Only she was getting the Special Therapy Machine (another scream from far away).

"Horror movies have finally failed me! I feel so betrayed!" she screamed at the top of her lungs, swearing she would only take advice from action movies henceforth, as she gave one more valiant kick. Her foot landed in Manten's mouth and she was rewarded with a high-pitched squeak and the satisfying crunch of a breaking tooth.

"FUCK! You exposed my nerve you unforgivable little bitch!"

"Yay, go me!" Kagome shouted with the enthusiasm of a cheerleader doing a cheer, as Kagura and Hiten held her forcefully back against the bench. She kicked and screamed like an eight year old boy about to get a haircut.

"Manten, fucking put the straps on!" Hiten roared, straining to keep Kagome contained. Hiten was covered in an array of needle thin scratches and the tip of his ear had been ripped off. Kagura had turned into a walking bruise during this encounter with Kagome, and Manten had a few bloody decorations as well in addition to his recently broken tooth. Naraku's elite warriors had never been so close to defeat.

Naraku was standing in the doorframe, eyes and nose shadowed, with his arms folded. His mouth arched up into a brief smirk. "This has been quite entertaining, Kagome. But now it's time."

"I hope you know I'm impervious to all forms of attack except being fed chocolate cake," she snarled. "So if you want to do me any damage, bring me a cake!" She was so tired by that point that the wounds Kagura had left on the side of her face were numb, even though she could feel thin strings of blood attached to the curves of her face. "And you know what, I'm still sex-ay!" she added. She also decided she should have _definitely _taken over the world before attempting to avenge herself with Naraku.

Naraku chuckled. "Begin at your leisure, Kagura."

As Kagura, face blank and noncommittal, approached with the metal arm, Kagome deliriously wondered what had ever made this seem like a good idea at all, and why the other Kagome hadn't mentioned this machine. (Never mind the horrified screaming.)

* * *

"Who the hell drove into this building with that convertible sports car?!" Inuyasha yelled at the secretary. He had been asking the same question for five minutes now and she had given the same answer every time.

"I'll never tell! You can't take that away from me!"

Inuyasha was a bit baffled, but pursued anyway. The woman eyed the baseball bat in his hand. "Look, bitch. Someone used my fucking credit card to buy that damn car and I want to punch his fucking face into the floor! Do it or I'll smash your computer!"

"No!" she screamed, diving protectively over it. "I won't let you!"

"Tell me!"

"I don't know! Go into the hallway and find him yourself!" she pressed a button and the card-key reader's light turned green from red. "Just don't touch my computer! It has my latest fanfiction on it!"

"Whatever, I don't even care," Inuyasha said as he waltzed into the hallway. "What the hell? Do I have to fucking check all the rooms?!"

Then he noticed that a door on the stairwell had been screwed off its hinges. As he went over to investigate, he further noticed the door smelled much like his aftershave.

"What the fuck?" he said. "Who would dare use the same smell as me?! That's it, you're going down, you little shit!" he said. He swung his baseball bat high into the air, smashed the side of the doorjamb for no good reason, and pelted down the stairs with a mighty war cry.

He stumbled and blinked in the sudden darkness as he entered the dungeon.

"Hello?" a female voice called out from the second cell. Inuyasha approached and leapt back a foot in surprise at the shadowy girl inside. "Hi, I'm Kagome."

"What? Ka-Kagome?! How the hell did you get in here?!"

"Well, I was abducted, but I'm not really sure about the details since I lost my memory." She smiled cheerfully.

Inuyasha slumped back against the wall with a goofy smile. He couldn't believe his luck. He was going to get to smash out windows _and_ rescue Kagome! (He was never very good at connecting the dots; if the picture made a circle, he would probably wind up with a highly complex cube contained within a pyramid, or possibly an ice cream cone.) Without further ado, he crushed the bars that the other Kagome could have quite easily slipped out from.

"Thank you," she said happily as she stepped over the wreckage, still looking shadowy in the guttering torches on the wall. Inuyasha squinted at her. "I sure wish Kagome had done that before she had left, so I could leave this place!"

"Hang on a minute! You just said that _you _were Ka-Kagome!" He took a whiff and decided she smelled decidedly unlike Kagome. So he made the daring decision that he would never tell Kagome he had mixed her up with another girl. That could lead to horrendous "revenge" from her.

"I am, but there's another one, too."

"Oh God, no...you're fucking kidding..." His eyes widened in horror. One Kagome was manageable (after tranquilized, zonked out in front of the television, maybe), but two? He couldn't handle two of them. "There just can't...how the hell are you multiplying?!" He grappled with the wall, trying to support his immensely strong demonic self. He felt a little dizzy and thought maybe the world was going black on him. (He is very melodramatic.)

"We're not multiplying. Anyway, I will probably be the only remaining Kagome after today. She told me she was going to kick Naraku's bum-bum, but that was some time ago after they took her to the---" She shuttered. "I can't even say it."

"Where did they take her? What do you mean only Ka-Kagome remaining?"

"Well, she's probably been tortured to death by now!" the other Kagome said cheerfully. "I'll go wait upstairs with the darling secretary. Maybe I can get a role in her fanfic."

"Shit!" Inuyasha yelled. "Where the hell is Ka-Kagome?!"

The other Kagome shivered again. "Just follow the scent of DESPAIR!" she screamed before darting away.

"Wait a minute...This is a common misconception...despair doesn't actually have a scent. Some animals can detect _fear _by the---"

"I don't even care!"

* * *

The metal arm was sitting unused by the bench. Apparently it was there to frighten her while they went at her with more conventional weapons to start with. Kagura held a finely honed blade to Kagome's throat, with just enough pressure to make swallowing painful.

"Tell us, Kagome. Don't you remember yesterday? Do you really want to repeat that?" Kagura looked somewhat unbelieving.

"I don't know anything about a Shikon Jewel! I've never even heard of it before!"

"Oh yeah? Then how did you know it was mined in Brazil?!"

"I didn't know that! I guessed that!" Kagome shouted. The knife made a small slice in her chin.

"Crap, I forget how fragile humans are..." Kagura grumbled as Kagome let off an impressive gasp, like a teapot about to whistle.

"Why is this even so important anyway?" she growled as she tried to smash her head even further back into the chair, away from the knife. Hiten and Manten were still glowering nearby, warily watching Kagome to ensure she didn't escape.

"That's not your business."

Naraku frowned suddenly. "I have some other business to attend to," he said as he glanced at the face of a cellular phone briefly before replacing it in his pocket. "Please continue without me and deliver a report later. If she does not talk by the end of the day, we'll assume she's not lying. Kill her."

"That's harsh!" Kagome shouted after him. "I hope your dog dies, Jimmy!"

The air seemed to turn even colder as everyone around her held their breaths, so tense that not a muscle stirred; everyone was entirely still. As a matter of fact, Kagome was sure she could hear hearts beating. Naraku's back had gone rigid and he had lost a bit of his fluid grace. She watched him out of the eye that hadn't swollen shut yet from Kagura's scratches. When he slowly turned on his heel to face her, his mouth was in a grim, peaceful line but his eyes were livid.

"What did you say to me?" he asked, deathly calm, as if asking about some trivial matter, like what time Kagome would like to be over for tea.

"I'm not sure, I think I said I hope your dog dies," Kagome said, trying to remember if that had, indeed, been the insult she had chosen to use. She had plenty of them, and she usually just let whatever wanted to be said get said. "But it's possible I said a pox on ye."

He walked slowly towards her. Kagura, Hiten, and Manten backed off rather immediately as Naraku's shadow fell over Kagome. He stared down at her and Kagome's heart beat painfully in her chest. He grabbed her by the arm and ripped her easily from the bench, causing Kagome to cry out at the sudden pain as the straps snapped.

"Holy mother of pearl! Jeez, I didn't know it was a sensitive subject!" Kagome said, voice a higher octave than normal with hysteria.

"I tolerate no one speaking illy of my dog," he said. He threw Kagome against the far wall with a blast of black energy that crackled. A sickening snap echoed throughout the room; after a moment had passed, during which the misty remains of Naraku's spell energy disappeared smokily into the air, Naraku approached Kagome's still body. Coldly, eyes narrowed fractionally as he looked down at her, he pressed a foot against Kagome's face until her jaw popped like a gear coming out of place. "Not even in death will you speak badly of my canine," he told her before exiting the room with graceful calm. As he reached the door he paused. "Kagura, clean this mess. Hiten, Manten, you are dismissed for now."

Kagura slowly approached Kagome with a disgusted face. After all the trouble they had gone to---to bring her here, to capture her after she had _gotten _here, to break her into the torture machine...Kagura sighed. What a waste. She paused when she reached Kagome's side. The human girl let out a pitiful groan and Kagura screamed shrilly as a hand flew to her heart.

"Holy shit! How can you _possibly _still be alive?!" No one could survive Naraku's demon technique. She had seen him use it many times before. Not even the strongest demons had so much as _twitched _after Naraku had used his technique Miasma! It was unthinkable that a human, the whole race of which didn't have any terrifying abilities after all as Kagura had learned a long time ago, could withstand the force and pressure of Naraku's technique. Furthermore, her jaw had been crunched!

Before awaiting a reply to her question, however, she pulled out her cell phone and hit the number 4 on speed dial. "Sesshoumaru? Hello, this is Kagura. Please pick me up from my apartment as soon as you are able. I don't care if it has to wait until tomorrow. I've sworn off aggravating humans and I want out of here." She hung up and raced out of the room.

But before she even reached the door, Inuyasha burst through with his baseball bat high above his head. "Damn you all to hell!" he said before targeting on Kagura.

"Inuyasha, you cur, get out of my way! I haven't time for this! It's not my fault you lost your job and relinquished your parking spot to me!" she said as she sent a gust of wind at him. It threw the bat slightly off course but Inuyasha was on a sugar high, so he brought it back down rather quickly. He grazed her shoulder.

"You're the bitch who got my spot? Damn you even more!" he spun the bat around again and cracked her on the head. She didn't even seem to notice.

"I don't have time for this!" she repeated, taking off at a run from the torture room. Inuyasha was about to follow in order to continue hitting her with the baseball bat when he noticed Kagome rolled onto the floor.

"Holy smokes!" He approached Kagome and knelt down beside her. "Shit..." He winced at her condition; she didn't look so well. But knowing Kagome, she got her own fair share of damage in...Still, she had clearly been injured and needed to be taken back to the apartment.

"Don't worry," Kagome slurred through her painful jaw, "I've gotta plan..." Although it sounded more like, _Ohh wowwy, I gaaha ban..._

She held up a pair of car keys and Inuyasha's face turned tomato red. He even managed an eye twitch.

* * *

"Inuyasha, I think it would be the best course of action for now," Miroku said seriously. "If Kagome were to get captured again---she probably wouldn't survive."

The two Kagomes were sitting peacefully with one another on the sofa, looking at each other in a sort of dazed manner. The heavily bandaged Kagome was holding up a paper flash card, one among many that she had made out of cheques from Inuyasha's cheque book. She was helping the amnesiac Kagome remember things about every day life in the human world.

"That is a well," the amnesiac Kagome said. "But I don't remember ever seeing one."

Bandaged Kagome nodded, and pulled up the next one, waving it in her peer's face.

"That is a---actually, I'm not sure what that is..." she said with a slightly horrified look at the jumble of lines. Shippou, who was taking a break from his juicer (mostly because he had _broken_ his juicer, and had 300 gallons of undrinkable orange juice lying around anyway), also squinted at the picture.

"I think it's supposed to be some kind of rock," he answered.

Bandaged Kagome shook her head no. If half her face wasn't covered in bandages, she would have frowned at them all.

"Wo," she said. "Id a BUILDING!" she yelled at her pupils. Stupid pupils. They should have known nothing offended Kagome more than rocks (for the next three minutes, anyway).

"Yay, it's a building!" Shippou said delightedly. "Okay, let's try to figure out what kind of building."

Amnesiac Kagome squinted thoughtfully for a moment. Bandaged Kagome tapped her foot impatiently.

Meanwhile, Inuyasha, Miroku, and Sango were in the kitchen discussing their plan.

"But..." Inuyasha grumbled, a strange look coming on his face. "But it's not time yet..."

Sango frowned. "Inuyasha, we knew this day would come from the very beginning. Actually, it's what we've been _fighting _for since the beginning."

"But..." he glanced over at the two Kagomes from the open kitchen door. Bandaged Kagome was heavily abusing amnesiac Kagome with his cheque book. "I knew I should have hidden that," he grumbled. "Now I have to buy more cheques."

Miroku cast a glance in that direction and sighed. "Inuyasha, you know the plan."

He slumped down into a chair at the kitchen table. "Whatever, see if I even fucking care. Ka-Kagome!" he yelled, standing up again and stomping towards the sofa. Two girls looked up at him. "Yeah, you," he said as he picked out bandaged Kagome with a pointed finger. "Come on. We're going now."

She blinked. "Whed?"

"She said where," Shippou translated for everyone.

"Duh, we're fucking sending you home, quarrelsome brat."

* * *

Inuyasha tiptoed around the courtyard of the apartment complex. Still in the uncut lawn he caught sight of dulled bits of glass from the pickle relish jar that Shippou had thrown at him so many weeks ago. Grumbling under his breath, Inuyasha laid down plastic bags filled with glue.

He overheard Shippou clawing up a tree and smirked. He was just laying down his last bag of glue when an indiscernible creature jumped out of the sky and landed directly on him.

_"Raaah!" _was its war cry. "Now, Shippou!"

Inuyasha, from the ground and now covered in brown glue, watched in horror as Shippou sailed over him with a deadly weapon: one among many he had bought from an infomercial. Before Inuyasha could be splashed with liquid dish soap, however, he rolled out of the way and the majority of the blue gel landed on Kagome, who had been sitting on him.

"Damn it!" he said. "We don't have time for this! We have to get going in order to catch that bastard by surprise!"

"No! I don't want to take a Calculus test tomorrow!" Kagome shouted as she leapt from the ground. Inuyasha snatched her arm and pulled her back down to the ground. Sango, Miroku, and the other Kagome were watching this grave battle with deadpan looks. Miroku briefly wondered where all of Kagome's bandaging had gone, and promptly decided he probably didn't want to know.

Kagome and Shippou had been running from Inuyasha for the better part of three hours, which had quickly turned into a fight 'til the death to entertain Kagome. Now that Inuyasha had caught her, he wasn't going to let her run off again. So he carried her all the way to the brand new car as the other demons followed. Shippou aided the process by throwing large amounts of chunky orange juice on everyone.

When they arrived at Demons, Inc., the sun had set entirely and the moon shone eerily down on the tall building. As they stepped inside, Miroku took a big breath of air and sighed satisfactorily.

"Ah, how I've missed this place," he said. "It seems like forever ago I was a man of respect."

"You were never a man of respect," Sango put in helpfully. "So don't let it bother you too much."

"Keh," Inuyasha added, prodding Kagome along the dark hallways. He belatedly noticed Shippou and Kagome exchange winks; before he could get a firm grip on either they'd darted off into the darkness.

"Go, Shippou!" Kagome shouted.

"Fuck! Get the fuck back here!" Inuyasha roared before bolting after one or the other of them. "We don't have time for your hijinks!"

And that's how the group spent the next two hours looking for Kagome and Shippou.

"You know what," Miroku panted as they collapsed in their old TV room, which hadn't changed a lick in their absence. Well, it smelled more like flowery lotion than before, but that was it. "I don't think they're even anywhere in the building any more."

They were interrupted during their recovery session by a loud crash in the hallway.

"Crap fuck it!" Inuyasha screamed. "I'm going to get you, bitch!" He launched himself out of his old wheely chair and ran out of the room at top speed. He skidded to a halt when he noticed the boss of Demons, Inc. had been the source of the crash and was giving him a hellish glare.

"That's him!" the amnesiac Kagome shouted. "That's Naraku!"

Naraku turned to face her with a surprising amount of scrutiny. "How the hell are you still alive?!" he snapped.

"You're the one that kidnapped Ka-Kagome?!"

"Yes!" amnesiac Kagome shouted. Sango let out a groan of despair at what she knew was about to happen. She was going to be accomplice to a murderer.

"Time to go down, bastard!" Inuyasha roared (he was going to have a very sore throat in the morning) before charging at Naraku. He hadn't quite been planning to hunt down Kagome's captor until she had been booted off to her world, but given this nice opportunity he decided to go for it.

Naraku held out a hand to block Inuyasha with a blast of energy, but Miroku cracked him on the back of the head with a drawer from the file cabinet. Naraku stumbled and swore before turning onto his new enemy, which gave Inuyasha a chance to run into him in delicate bull-dozer fashion. The trio tumbled down a flight of carpeted stairs while Sango and amnesiac Kagome watched placidly from the top of the stairwell.

Shippou materialized from somewhere and latched onto Naraku's leg with his piercing teeth, and refused to let go even when Inuyasha and Naraku fell out the window. Miroku, with an uncharacteristic war cry, followed them with a mighty jump and managed to get a punch into Naraku's face before he was thrown back with a powerful kick. Naraku and Inuyasha traded a few exciting rounds of cuts and scratches, neither being in the position to unleash their demon techniques. Just as Miroku was rejoining the fray, Inuyasha sprang back and unsheathed a sword from nowhere---his own demon technique, the Tessaiga. He swiped the blade in a downward cut like he was over-aggressively slicing a sandwich in half (that's usually what he used it for) and left a huge rent in the parking lot, although both Naraku and Miroku leapt out of the way in time. Shippou was knocked loose and scampered away to regain his composure.

"Watch what you're doing, my friend!" Miroku shouted.

"Stand out of the way!" Inuyasha roared as he sliced through a cloud of attractive purple miasma that Naraku unleashed.

Sango and amnesiac Kagome, who had, by that point, joined the group in the parking lot watched for a moment. Sango, with a sigh, finally jumped in and gave Naraku a burning punch that opened a hole in his arm.

"You bitch! Hiten, Manten! Get out here!"

Now more evenly matched, things reached a stand still. Miroku and Sango were blocking the two brothers and making small advances, thanks to the damage Kagome had done to them before. Inuyasha and Naraku alternated in beating each other up.

At that point, when things seemed cut right down the middle in terms of odds, everyone suddenly stood perfectly still.

Horrified, Naraku slowly looked to the top of the building. Where Kagome was sitting with a more demonic grin than he had ever managed. Her chuckle had managed to reach everyone through the battle noises somehow, never mind how since everyone knows evil chuckles don't travel through sound waves but by telepathy anyway.

Kagome, on the top of the building, looked more like a (demonic) cat than a person. Even Inuyasha felt a little bit of terror. Naraku, meanwhile, cast a glance to the other Kagome standing in the entryway to the building, who waggled her eyebrows and smiled brightly.

"What the fuck..."

Before another word could be spoken, Kagome began unleashing her arsenal.

"Watch out!" she yelled at her friends below as she launched off a series of grenade attacks in the form of rotting food from the break room. Naraku squealed as someone's month-old casserole spilled on his hair and ran into his eyes.

Then Kagome leapt off the building with a shiny black object in her hand. She barraged Naraku with staples and then landed quite nicely on top of his stomach. While Naraku flopped around trying to recover from these small, annoying pains that weren't causing him any fundamental damage, Kagome popped out her next weapon: a portable radio that someone had left on his desk, which she had happily tuned to the love songs station. This she blasted at top volume, quickly handing off the device to Shippou who bounced around out of reach with it, singing along, while Naraku screamed in pain and threw Kagome from himself.

Then Kagome decided to unleash her next weapon. It was a delightful weapon cobbled together from janitorial supplies. Smashing the tip of her mop into the ground, Kagome pulled the handle of the squeeze bottle that was tied around it, which unleashed a powerful spray of chemical, which interacted with the batteries she had removed from the small vacuum cleaner used on the stairs and attached to the front of the bottle, which resulted in a giant explosion from the expanding chemicals inside the battery casing, which burst the industrial bottle of bleach. A rainbow of chemical colors washed over the air, heeded on by the fire that she had begun. Naraku had cleared the area but this caught Manten by surprise and he was soon engulfed in a smelly, fiery doom.

"Noooooooooooooooooooo!" Hiten yelled out.

"Hey, I saw that movie, too!" Kagome shouted out to him happily over the sound of Shippou singing love songs.

"Really?!" Hiten yelled back. "I love the part when that guy gets his fingers cut off!"

"That part was so gross!" she replied. "Ugh, I never want to think about how that girl got her leg run over again, either! What a horrible movie!"

"Enough!" Naraku growled, silencing this pleasant chit-chatter. "I don't know how the hell you've survived, you little bitch, or how the hell there are two of you, but---"

"Wait a minute, you didn't bring her here, too?" Kagome asked, blinking. "Who did?"

Naraku snarled, causing the staples still stuck in his face to bunch up like a smiley face. "I don't really---"

"I did," a crisp female voice said over the noise (primarily Manten's screams of unending torture from the bleach spilling into his burns).

"What the hell?!" Inuyasha added in. "How the hell did a third human fucking get here?!"

"You have always been incompetent employees!" Naraku screamed.

"Now that was uncalled for," Miroku admonished. "It's not our fault no one ever gave us new security tapes."

"Is your name Kagome, too?" the amnesiac Kagome asked.

"Oh God," Sango mumbled, wishing she had just gone home when she had been given a chance.

"Of course not," the new woman snapped. No one seemed too sure since she also looked an awful lot like the other two human women. "My name is Kikyou. Which you, Midoriko, should know. Why the hell did you leave the Demons, Inc. headquarters without us? You knew the plan!"

"Well excuse me!" Kagome shouted. "But I wasn't about to go home with some demons I don't even know!"

"What the hell is going on here?" Shippou added to the general confusion. "Why are there three Kagomes and why do they all know each other?"

"Who cares!" Inuyasha replied. "It's time to kill EVERYBODY!"

He launched at Naraku with renewed force and with a sweep from Tessaiga shredded his enemy's arm from the body. Naraku growled furiously but took off after Kagome rather than concentrating on Inuyasha, even though that clearly would have been a better choice since Inuyasha was the one capable of ripping his limbs off.

Kagome, however, took it all in stride and did what anyone in her position would do.

She gave a joyful cry and raced back into the building. She laughed as pretty much every demon she had ever met chased her down the hallways, up and down the stairs, across balconies, and finally into a hallway lined with doors. Kagome picked one at random, stepped inside, and slammed the door shut behind her.

Everyone stopped, panting, bleeding, growling, Shippou still singing with the radio.

"Wow," Inuyasha finally said, sword hanging at his side. "That was fucking anticlimactic. I can't believe she just went home without fucking saying THANK YOU!"

* * *

Comments: Haha...I bet you thought that the amnesiac Kagome was Kikyou, didn't you? :) (To clear up any confusion: amnesiac Kagome == Midoriko, brand new Kagome == Kikyou, bandaged Kagome == the real Kagome. Naraku brought Kagome to the demon world. Kikyou brought Midoriko to the demon world. Why shall be divulged next time!) Time for the big finale! Will everything be explained? Will all things be tidied up? Doubtful. I don't even remember what I was doing when I wrote most of this stuff.


	10. Chapter 10: What Happened to the Shikon?

DEMONS, INC.

Chapter 10: Whatever Happened to the Shikon, Anyway?

* * *

When Kagome woke up, she was surrounded by soft white linens. She was in a warm bed and everything around her was blindingly white, from the walls to the sunlight coming in through the partly opened window. In a white plastic chair next to her bed was her mother.

"Mommy!" Kagome shouted at the top of her lungs. Her mother, who had been dozing off in the morning calm, was startled into the waking world. She smiled broadly to see her only daughter was doing better.

"Hello, sweetheart."

"Wait, you're not gonna tell me it was all a dream, are you?" Kagome asked with a wince. What if it had been? What if the demons who had become her best friends were no more than figments of her imagination? Oh well, that meant Houjou was still fair game.

"That what was all a dream?" her mother asked placidly as she took her daughter's hand. "Don't get too worked up, dear, you have a lot of recovering left to do."

Kagome blinked and looked around, realizing she was in a hospital room. After wiggling around some and testing herself out, she found that she had a brace around her leg, supporting her ankle, and had her head wrapped in bandages. The injuries matched the ones she had received in Naraku's torture chamber (except that her jaw only felt bruised), but the fact that she thought she had healed in the demon world (miraculously in a few hours) didn't lend much credit to her crazy adventure there.

"How long was I gone?" she asked, squinting at her mother. A sad look overcame the older woman's face and she glanced towards the window.

"Four and a half months," she said. "You were found yesterday evening wandering out by a train station in the middle of Tokyo, asking everyone for ice cream. You were handing out blank cheques with a signature belonging to 'Inuyasha' as well. You just disappeared one day and despite how much we looked, we couldn't find anything...almost as if you had vanished. The police were baffled, but had investigators looking for you...we had television ads..."

"You mean I've had a television ads in two different worlds and I never got to see _either _of them?!" she howled. "Oh, the pain is tremendous!"

"Kagome, love, please calm down." Then hesitantly, she asked, "Where have you been, darling?"

"Mama, you wouldn't believe me if I told you, so because I'm going to tell you, please don't tell anyone else about it and don't throw me in with the nutters!"

Her mother smiled. "Of course, Kagome. I'll listen to whatever you have to say."

With her whole arsenal of expressive hand gestures, Kagome told her mother the entire story (except the part where she almost kissed Inuyasha) and only fell out of bed once.

* * *

Inuyasha, Miroku, Naraku, Kikyou, Sango, Hiten, Midoriko, and Shippou were around a giant conference table in the Demons, Inc. building. There was a cup of steaming coffee on the surface of the laminated desk in front of each chair.

They were all attacking each other like wild animals with nothing to lose. The coffee had been there since they arrived, and who knew why.

"Tell me why you want the Jewel activated!" Inuyasha demanded.

"Duh!" Kikyou yelled from across the table, ducking as Shippou flung a cup of coffee at her. "I was going to change myself into a demon and take over the human world!"

"Holy crap! And why were Kagome and Midoriko brought here?" Sango shouted.

"Duh!" Hiten added gracefully. "They're descended from powerful priestesses!"

"So what?!" Kikyou barked. "I'm descended from a powerful priestess, too. Midoriko was brought here because I don't want to die in the process of activation, which I heard was required for the Jewel!"

"Kagome, to be honest, is someone we just randomly plucked out of the human world," Naraku explained, lunging powerfully at Inuyasha, who blocked him with Tessaiga. It was pure genius cornering them in here, Inuyasha thought, since Naraku couldn't use his Miasma technique lest he kill himself in the closed-in room.

"And why did you want the Shikon activated, Naraku?!" Miroku demanded as he punched Hiten in the gut.

"Duh! I am going to use its power to open a gate into the human world, in which case I will take over the human world and turn them into slaves!"

"Fuck, that's unoriginal!" Inuyasha barked. "I'm going to fucking slice your head off!"

And that's exactly what he did. Everyone stared down at the lifeless body as it bled onto the attractive blue carpet.

"Wow, that was easy," Inuyasha said, just as the police arrived to arrest them all, including Naraku, who was now wanted on multiple charges and dead or not was going to have to sit through his execution. Then they punted Midoriko back into the human world as a favor, since they didn't want to waste tax money on figuring out what to do with her. Afterward, the Shikon Jewel was appropriately activated with a switch on its side and used to close off all ties with the human world, effectively putting Miroku and Inuyasha out of a job.

No one knows why this wasn't thought of before all the trouble got started, anyway, although there was a pretty convincing rumor that Naraku---who had been boss of Demons, Inc., since it was founded hundreds of years ago---was the one who actually opened gateways to the human world to accomplish a lot of wealth: first in the form of the business, which was supported both by taxes and by private investors although became an immense cash cow by offshoots such as baseball trading cards, TV shows, and other things, and second from trafficking humans into random slaveries on the other side of the globe, where the demons weren't afraid of humans at all. This convincing rumor would be proven true two years later after an extensive investigation that mostly consisted of cleaning up after Kagome.

Then there was the problem of why the hell Naraku had been making such a big fuss about kidnapping one single human when he had been trafficking hundreds of them for years, furthermore considering he was the one who opened the gates anyway and could, as boss of Demons, Inc., cross over any time he wanted. In the end people decided it got started with an argument that Naraku had gotten into with his favorite employee Kagura when she threatened to quit working so that she could move across the border to live with her fiance and his adopted daughter. The Shikon Jewel would supposedly allow him to have more control over gates to and from the human world instead of relying on random luck to uncover new interdimensional gates. That didn't really make a whole lot of sense from Naraku's point of view, but people decided to leave it at that since Naraku was dead and anyway the tax dollar flow had been moved into paying for uncovering a scam involving a lot of broken juicers. Shippou had finally gotten a chance to sue somebody.

* * *

Kagome frowned as she caught sight of her reflection in a shop window. It was winter now, so she was wearing her very fashionable cream-colored coat as she clipped along the walkway in her brand new pumps. She'd been back for over a year. She had graduated high school (and she had made an A on that Calculus grade, after all) and moved on to university. Over time she became more and more convinced that the demon world did exist, despite the fading intensity of her memories, and the affront on logic such a belief presented. After all, how else would she have come home wearing Inuyasha's boxer shorts? Not to mention...

She opened up her purse and pulled out a tiny folded paper. It was a cheque; one of the flash cards that she had made for the other Kagome who turned out to be the woman named Midoriko. She unfolded it and read Inuyasha's name printed on the top corner again. It was silly to hold on to, but it featured Shippou's drawing on it of a cow wearing sunglasses with a shiny tooth sparkle, and furthermore it had Inuyasha's name on it. Unfortunately, she'd handed out all the ones that had his signature, but as she'd forged those anyway it wasn't too much of a problem.

At first, she thought that after her daring leap back into the human world Inuyasha would probably come after her. Now she wondered why she had ever thought that way. Of course he wouldn't...he had vehemently wanted to get her out of his hair. Which was a shame because she so loved to put things in his hair, including fruit preserves, toothpaste, bubblegum, and attractive twigs.

She sighed and moved on. She was visiting her family for the holidays and was on her way home from having dinner with her childhood friends. However, even that hadn't gotten her mind entirely off those four and a half months that had impacted her life so much. What if Naraku had managed to kill or hurt one of her friends? (And why had he been so sensitive about his dog?) She wondered if Midoriko had made it home. Wondered, wondered, wondered...if they ever thought about her...

* * *

"Hey, Inuyasha," Shippou said as he burst into the kitchen, eyes gleaming. "Guess what I've got?"

"What do you got, runt," Inuyasha answered in a monotone voice. Now that he was out of jail (he broke down the bars for himself and the others, and no one had bothered chasing after them because of the whole tax dollar flow thing), he was extremely bored. Miroku was part of the camera crew for a local news team, now that Demons, Inc. was gone, and Inuyasha had moved on to be a hunter. Despite the fact that everyone else was happy and doing well---Sango and Miroku were hanging out all the time, Shippou was making progress in math class, and Izayoi had forgiven him and cheerfully called him all the time again---he felt clouded by a constant sense of ennui.

Shippou gave an evil little chuckle, the kind that had been so prevalent when he had schemed with Kagome so long ago. He opened up his hand and dropped something small on the table in front of Inuyasha.

Inuyasha stared as a small pink gem stone rolled to a stop. He smirked down at it.

"You fucking little thief..."

* * *

Kagome paused as she returned to the grounds of her family's home. She moved to a large tree, with paper wishes wrapped around the branches. She glanced at it for a moment, then looked at the cheque in her hand. Sadly she walked past the tree until she came to the small river that moved over the property. She crouched down, keeping her knees carefully bent to avoid any skirt problems, and stared down into the icy water as it musically carried on its way.

"This is getting silly," she told herself. "So, goodbye, Inuyasha." She looked at the cheque again. Clenching her teeth she ripped it in half. As tears rolled down her face she tore the remaining pieces again and again and again and dropped them into the water. Blurry eyed, she watched them disappear with the current. She covered her face with her hands and sobbed quietly. She didn't understand why it was so important to her, but she knew that she couldn't linger anymore despite how much the demon world had been on her mind. She had to get it all out of her system. In a week she would be back at school. There were people all around her waiting to be her friends. There was a _human_ man out there who could make her happy.

"Oh, the ironic pain is tremendous," she mumbled through her sobs. "I wanted so badly to leave! Now I wish I was still there..."

* * *

If Kagome had bothered to ever watch the television (she was so sick of infomercials that by the time she got home even the sight of a TV was enough to make her scream---much to her brother's annoyance, since he now had a portable one that he carried around with him everywhere he went, including the toilet, not that Kagome knew that part), she would have known that a very unusual thing was happening all over the world. But she went on obliviously, returning to school and diving right back into her studies. She befriended people in her classes and felt, really, that she was learning how to live in the human world again quite nicely. It was calmer than the demon world. She got to wear nice clothes again (actually, her time of being dirty and poorly dressed there had inspired her to become extremely fashionable upon her return to the human world). And, best of all, she was allowed to go out in public without smelling like the inside of someone's shoe after that shoe had gone through three different people who respectively worked on a ranch, in a zoo, and as a garbage disposer.

However, just to torture herself (she supposed that must be it), she did work in a bakery that made wedding cakes, to help pay for her education. With her own lack of romance, she grew accustomed to being happy with everyone else's. It was nice enough when it wasn't depressing.

* * *

"Alright, this has to be it," Inuyasha grumbled to himself. "Hey, old man!"

"Ehhh?" an elderly fellow replied to Inuyasha's grumping. The old man blinked multiple times at the dog ears on his head, but Inuyasha merely flattened them and growled a little.

"Where's this girl?" He shoved a driver's license under the man's nose. Kagome had left it at his apartment, along with some of her other possessions. (Including the pair of clothes she had originally arrived in, a list of nail polishes that completely baffled Inuyasha, and a candy wrapper.)

"Probably inside the house..." the old man said. It was a pleasant spring afternoon and all the university kids were out for spring break (or reading week or whatever you happen to call it in your country). "Wait. No, she will be by the river...or the well-house...hmm...that lazy girl needs more chores!"

The elderly man tottered off as Inuyasha gave him a deadpan stare. After he shook it off, he trotted around the yard and wondered if Kagome actually was here. He'd been looking for an awfully long time and creating a big stir in the process. He was a little miffed that Kagome wasn't helping out at all. The least she could do was give a call to the cell phone number he kept shouting any time a camera crew located him. (It really was becoming like a rabid game of _Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?)_

He stopped when he saw her. Finally! After so long of searching! She was standing on the river bed. It was still a little chilly, since the spring was new, so she was wearing a light cardigan sweater over a cheerful dress. She looked unnaturally serious and maybe a bit deflated.

"Hey, bitch!" he shouted. "Get your fucking ass over here!"

Kagome's head snapped around with practically demonic speed, jaw dropping. She blinked a few times.

"What the fuck are you staring at?!" Her jaw snapped shut and her mouth took on a happy smile.

"Inuyasha!" She bolted at him until her arms had latched around his waist. "Where have you been?! I was waiting for you!"

Inuyasha tried to pry her off but there was no removing of that one. She might have been going for a world record.

"Hey you, look at me!"

Kagome did, managing a slightly scary smile. "You know what, Inuyasha?"

He narrowed his eyes. "What?"

"I missed you!" she said as she shoved him into the cold river. He went in with a huge splash as Kagome laughed manically. "Now you'll never escape me!"

And that was the truth. Inuyasha and Kagome, with the Shikon Jewel, changed the well-house into the only permanent portal between worlds, so Kagome came and went as she pleased. The rest of their lives (all the time-warping lengthened Kagome's life by several thousand years, plus she drank Shippou's Elixir of Youth as an added bonus when she mistook it for a soda, so she had no problem adjusting to a demon's very long natural life span) were spent in a merry chase around two different globes, Shippou and Kagome causing troubles while Inuyasha, Sango, and Miroku went after them to keep them in line. Inuyasha wound up in the mental hospital at least four more times because of the mortal, Kagome was kidnapped eight more times but managed to escape her captors in all instances while leaving them permanently traumatized, Inuyasha hunted them down and never gave them a chance to try to recover anyway, Sango and Miroku had a rather large wedding, Kagura and Sesshoumaru had a much smaller wedding, and Shippou became a famous mathematician for no good reason. Oh, and Kagome appeared on the news twelve more times and never got to see it. But there were still plenty more adventures to be had.

There was a brief stunt where Kagome almost married a merman, but alas it was not meant to be.

She settled for marrying Inuyasha instead.

* * *

The End

* * *

Comments: I can't believe it's over!! In closing, I'd like to thank everyone who's stuck with me over the years and actually read this monster, and a special extra thank you to those who took the time to review and e-mail me! What a boost to my already overwhelmingly big ego. ;-) I'm going to miss writing for this story! Who knows...maybe in the future I will write a one-shot or two to add on to this, detailing Kagome's other adventures...Until then, I'll leave it to your imagination as to how she cornered Inuyasha and forced him into marrying her!  
Lemme know if you think I ought to write another story in this particular style!  
xoxo Sissy


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